The Summer of Cheesecake

Time wounds all heels

2019-01-07T10:56:00.002-08:00

The New Year is just the flippant tail-end of melancholia accompanying the holidays. Since fourteen or fifteen years of age I felt this very palatable sense of responsibility watching time crawl past, as if every quiet moment of unproductively will be weighed against you when your life on earth comes to an end. So much wasted time! "You could have become a ___________! So-and-so became a CEO of a successful start-up by 23!"
"SHAME!"

I'll be thirty-three in March and I made the realization I'll soon have spent half of my life rebuilding and restructuring my life outside a childhood raised in the Unification Church. There is so much bizarre and often hidden programming that has rooted itself in my subconscious, the process of identifying it and being faced with how it's probably irrevocably fucked up your life can be nauseating. A good visual example for me was in the most recent 'Fantastic Beasts' film where Newt Scamander pulls a parasitic worm from a wizard's eye, which has been slowly poisoning him from inside.

In retrospect I often wonder if others I spend time with can see the flicker of some demented madness slide like a shadow across my eyes and hibernate in the back of my skull. Luckily, I have one or two friends that I can be candid with about living with depression, one of whom I explained that you never really defeated your demons - you just get better at training them to sit up, roll over, and lay down on command. Other times, it's me physically laying on the floor and wondering how human flesh can feel this weighted and heavy.

As a recovering self-proclaimed pessimist I've decided that making more positive and impactful choices in my life is reachable, albeit in baby steps and tiny bites. Encountering people who live and breathe positive manifestation often makes me as nauseous as watching a person willingly consume a gooey-duck clam. Or as I call them: dick clams. Telling people about them is my new bliss, watching their faces shift to horror as the google image results pop up. But continuing in the theme of gross work-like things, I decided it's time to pull out the tweezers and start tugging out the leeching ruminations from my mind.

Both the therapist and psychiatrist I see specialize in people who have experienced trauma. I've never quite settled with the terms PTSD or civilian-PTSD, as I've no military/combat experience and I wouldn't want to detract from their understanding and life overseas. But my psychiatrist in particular shared that people who've lived through physical, emotional, mental, sexual abuse have similar responses and reactions to veterans. For example: the inability to sleep at night due to heightened awareness. I turned down the offer of sleep medication in exchange for instilling habits like exercise, yoga, and my attempts at meditation. I've never felt settled enough to meditate.

Yesterday, I attended an audio performance and experimentation with sound/meditation revolving around the subtleties of tea preparation. The onslaught of noises the city makes took a backseat to the sounds of a tea kettle boiling on an electric stove, scooping dry tea leaves, Tibetan singing bowls, and pouring of water. With the cordless headphones on, I tried to shift into a comfortable position on the floor cushion - maybe this would all blend together like the combined sounds of a coffee shop that lull people into a productive zen, or perhaps even something akin to the white noise app I use to trick my brain into sleeping.
Instead, I ended up in a dark place in my mind...self-reflection for me is rarely an empty mirror. As a second-generation child born into the Unification Church, you're raised with the conflicting ideas that you were simultaneously born of perfect blood lineage (thanks, Reverend Moon?) and yet on a lifelong path of being constantly reminded you are NEVER good enough. Rejection and abandonment experienced in adult life feel like affirmations that you're unworthy instead of the searing cut of a new, unpleasant feeling.

My legs were falling asleep sitting on the floor pillow but I couldn't focus on my numb toes or even the subtle processions of the tea ceremony. The voices in my head were screaming over the honking of cabs, the talking tourists who pressed their faces against the glass of the gallery we were at, or the distant audio recording of another art-piece emitting from headphones ten feet away. Sometimes, your demons are ill-behaved shits who pay no attention to the progress you've made recently, instead of giving you space to celebrate your leveling-up they decide to stand in the corner of your bedroom and leer at you like a Babadook.

Shame is a huge component of control for most religious groups, I was no exception as being a woman we were handed extra pieces of baggage. Shame was the cloak my feelings of worthlessness wore. As a girl in the Unification Church I wasn't beholden to many life expectations other than keeping my sexual purity until marriage (oops) and being a baby-making vessel for God (oops 2x.) My own father told me that I didn't need to go to college, primarily due to my artistic inclinations and inability to concentrate on grades.
I'm 32 and I still troll myself for being single, especially when my peers are cohabiting, married, having families. I don't know how I feel about marriage and family but a resemblance to a normal relationship extending beyond a year sounds nice. With my most recent ex having spent months anticipating his exit strategy and looking for better options, I feel an immense feeling of humiliation for willingly living in this false world of him being my best friend and source of light. Looking at the women he follows on Instagram, the women he dated previously, and still maintains friendships with now - if I go there I'm baffled. How am I still not good enough?

So now is that arduous journey of "self-care" and appreciating yourself that will eventually lead you to a sense of completion and acceptance. Giving up my hair was relatively easy, to a degree I felt like I didn't deserve it anymore. Without a my crown of witchy hair, without a man, without money, without much of a support network, and probably minus the whole bathtub-surrounded-by-candles zen - I need to be able to look myself in the mirror without flinching in shame.

Stories that Come in the Mail

2015-09-10T16:21:00.000-07:00

Today I want to share something special with you. I recently had an unexpected gift arrive in the mail from a former first gen.

He had found my photography blog circuitously through Facebook, and wrote me a letter. It was quite the letter - nearly 10 pages of stories detailing his joining the church, his experience on MFT, the Blessing, and ultimately leaving.

You see, on my photography blog I write pretty heavily on the theme of sharing your voice and sharing your stories. I believe that for those of us who experienced the mind control of the Unification Church, accessing our experiences, our feelings, our voice and our stories is a big part of the awakening and healing process. So I bang on about that a lot.

I decided to reach out to him and ask if I could share the contents of his letter here, in the hopes that it will help others who are struggling with the process of leaving or healing.

Thankfully he agreed; so without further adieu I would like to introduce you to Kevin and his story:

Sunday, August 23, 2015

Jen -

Words have been spilling out of me inspired by your blog posts. Want to catch this word-flow, not lose the head waters of thought.

Reluctance fills me . . . wondering whether what I write will really make any difference. I ask myself, “Is my story of any value? Maybe I’ll sound melodramatic. Old school. Or perhaps the endurance of decades lost renders my talent simply unknowable?”

It’s been so long . . . I have no frame of reference to gauge any of this. Whether there really is anything left. All I know is that my creative voice – however muted, damaged, crushed, devastated, mocked, and compromised – it’s still there. Incredibly it’s simply not to be extinguished.

It speaks to me now and I cannot ignore it.

And so I must write.

Friday, July 10, 2015

Dear Jen,

I am overflowing with words. It’s difficult for me to focus these words unfurling now since reading your July 9th blog post and viewing your body of artwork, “Burdens of a White Dress”. Your invitation to view this work - accompanied by its story - speaks of such courage it brings me to tears as I write. I know full well what depths you’ve travelled to free yourself of your Burden. That journey recalls the same anxieties and relentless self-doubts that casts shadows on my own creative voice now. This voice has laid dormant inside me for so long behind an ocean of tears I have not yet shed. My true self, which holds all the genuine and authentic character of Who I Am, has been cast in shadow for many years now.

It’s important to me that you to know how I came about discovering your work and to share something about myself; to underscore the significance of how your words and art have so strongly affected me compelling me to write.

I too was Unificationist, a ‘First Generation’ church member. I had just turned 26 when I was among the 2,074 in ’82 at Madison Square Garden. At that mass wedding my bride and I stood next to the woman who introduced me to the church, the mother of a mutual friend. Her mom is my Spiritual Mother. I still keep in touch with her and make every effort to see her when she’s in the NYC area. She’s one of my all-time favorite people. The last I saw her was with her daughter in Astoria for breakfast one Saturday about two years ago. So it is not without irony when her daughter commented on your work. Since she and I are Facebook friends, your words appeared in my news feed. I am simply overwhelmed by how deeply they resonate within me.

I would like to ask of you to bear with me now as I know your time is valuable. Your story has unlocked a door that has strangely opened for me, one that elicits words that have longed to be told by my dormant voice. I realize that I just need to get this out, tell my story about how I came to this point and become open to how I can and must move forward. The core of my story, though abridged, will illuminate the how and why of my joining the church - and then leaving twenty years later.

1956-1963

I was born in Ypsilanti, Michigan, thirty miles west of Detroit, the youngest of three boys. By then my father was a life insurance salesman. But his real talent was in carpentry, cabinetry and fine woodworking. An avid golfer and fisherman, he also loved drafting, watercolor and calligraphy. Along with my mother, when they were first married, they were making side money doing wedding photography. Growing up I recall a photographer’s dark room in the basement of my childhood homes. As I grew older I learned that my mother had sacrificed her dream of becoming a portrait artist to be a house wife and a mom. Hers was an amazing talent and as a child I was often used as her model. I would drive her crazy fidgeting, as small children do, trying to stay still for long periods of time as she painted in oils and other mediums.

My earliest memories are of these and their many artistic pursuits. Among the most memorable though were those formed when they became intimately involved in local community theater. Much of what they performed in was Children’s Theatre and I was fascinated by and drawn into this world of the theater.

1963-1970

I was exposed to every aspect of their theatrical experiences and the Artistic Director of this local civic group became a life-long friend to me and my parents. My mom and dad’s most exciting, open and artistic selves came alive when enveloped in and acting on the stage. They painted flats and sewed costumes and learned to apply stage make-up. My dad cut gels and focused lekos and Fresnels on the sets. As I learned to read I would watch my parents doing scene rehearsals in the basement and followed their line readings in scripts. I became so good at this I would eventually know their parts and loved cueing them when they dropped lines or needed stage directions. This went on through elementary into junior high school. With this background then, from eighth grade on into my college years, I became involved with the theatre through vocal or instrumental music or acting in school plays and local summer stock. I also learned guitar and studied drums and percussion.

1970-1977

My first year out of high school was on a full instrumental and vocal music scholarship to a local community college. After a year, I transferred to the University of Michigan-Flint, where, as a Theater Arts major, I opened their brand new stage with the first words of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night as Orsino. After two years of study as a theater craftsman, in the summer of 1977, I was invited to San Diego to visit a college friend. I had done a lot of theater with her while in Flint. I instantly fell in love with San Diego and decided to stay. My college friend then encouraged me to audition for a private acting class where she was already enrolled. Auditions were invitation-only and upon being accepted I began to learn technique for television and film acting. After several weeks of scene study I was encouraged by my acting coach to keep going, eventually commuting to his Los Angeles classes. I was determined, at just 21, to become a professional actor. It made so much sense after all that I had been through as a child with my parents in community theater and then on into high school and local theater. Along with my training in college and summer stock it confirmed my belief that I become an actor. Acting classes in San Diego and Los Angeles supported this idea. I got my first headshots and resume together. I was on the threshold of fulfilling my ambitions of being an actor.

And then I met the Church.

********

As I was growing up I learned my mother was spiritually agnostic. She could not wrap her brain around the idea of a personified God. My father however, was a practicing Lutheran who later converted to the Episcopal Church. I believe he was drawn to the pageantry and liturgy of the church the same way he was so enamored with acting in the theater. So Sunday school as a young boy was insisted upon by my dad and then I would attend late morning service with him together. This triggered an internal fascination with who God is and a search for a way to live life in a godly way. This aspiration came naturally to me but was further prompted by my experiences with theater. The theater often presented stories of men of good character, of good conscience and deep heart. To be kind and empathetic, relied upon for good judgement and known for fairness. All these things rang true for me. To become this kind of man seemed intuitive and something I was naturally drawn to reach for. But I did not know how to go about it or understand the discipline required to achieve this way of life. And so my spiritual experiences before I joined the church set me to seek those answers.

A confluence of these experiences began a slow crescendo towards something so profound and so life-altering, it caused me to consciously leave my path of becoming an actor and to seek, rather, a spiritual path. I wanted to KNOW, truly know the right way to live my life, to become this man of good character. California was ripe then for that kind of self-discovery. All those moments lead to this New Way of viewing modern Christianity, so it seemed beyond coincidence when I met this delightful young woman who introduced me to the Unification Church (UC). I felt I had been guided to what I was looking for.

1977-1984

A year after first arriving in California I met this beautiful young woman from the UC in July of 1978 in downtown San Diego. That chance meeting prompted a discovery of what I believed to be the path towards this way of life I had been seeking. I eventually found myself among like-minded individuals who were all seeking the same thing. Joining the UC set into motion the chance to find out what living that way of life really meant. I believed it provided me with an environment to pursue it to its fullest. I soon realized, however, living in the church provided little or no real opportunity to contribute my artistic talents to God’s Providence as it was revealed to me. Other than my guitar playing I always looked for other ways to do so.

My first four years in the church were devoted to local and National Mobile Fundraising Teams (MFT). Incredibly I was assigned to the NYC region where I fundraised throughout the New York-New Jersey area. From 1979 to 1983 I lived in the New Yorker Hotel my entire time on MFT. It was during this time that I learned that the church had a Performing Arts department. But as I fundraised, from Montauk to High Point and from Syracuse to Cape May, there was nowhere I could truly ply my deeper artistic passions while on MFT. Not long after my ’82 Blessing, after almost four years of fundraising, my ‘mission’ then changed and I was transferred to Jacob House in Tarrytown, NY in 1983. I was to replace the General Affairs member who was transferring to an auto mechanic position at East Garden Garage.

1985-1990

While at Jacob House I worked with prominent leaders of this church facility who lived on Moon’s estate at nearby East Garden. I took care of the main houses at Jacob House and Gracemere Hall where members left their young children while they witnessed and fundraised on International One World Crusade (IOWC) teams throughout the country. After about a year serving there it was decided that I be sent to Los Angeles where a newly formed LA Jacob House was started by a young Korean mom. Not long after arriving in Los Angeles I was promptly ‘stolen’ by the church center’s State Leader after they learned of my musical background. The Korean leader of NY Jacob House had no idea that I originally joined the church in LA and so I was inadvertently returned to where I started. It seemed as if I was given the opportunity to reexamine why I came (back) to California and to reflect on my original intent before and after joining. Yet, for reasons that mystify me to this day, I never once seriously considered leaving the church during all that time.

Learning that I had previously cared for New York Jacob House, LA church leadership saw to it that I was eventually assigned to care for Moon’s estate and the grounds of Pasadena House near the Rose Bowl. My time in Southern California coincided with my spouse’s enrollment at the church’s Unification Theological Seminary as a three year Divinity student. After her graduation in 1987 my spouse was assigned to be the North Dakota State Leader. In February of 1988 I moved from sunny Los Angeles to Fargo and into a -10 degree winter. It was there we began our ‘family life.’ My time in Fargo was extraordinary. It became clear to me that, after ten years of church life, my sense of artistry had become dulled as time went on. With no place, no real environment to pursue my art, indifference began to cloud my creative urges. It was as if I had placed that sense into a very quiet room inside me and simply closed the door.

1991-1998

Still, I continued to seek ways to contribute artistically. Later that year in August of 1988 I was offered a chance to return to New York City. An open position with the Artists Association International became available and I took it. This church organization held conferences on ‘Absolute Values in the Arts’ for professionals in the field of the performing arts. All the church members working there had backgrounds in music, dance, conducting, composing, etc. The opportunity to work with this group was as the administrative assistant to the Executive Director who worked for Dr. Bo Hi Pak. Soon after this my spouse was given permission to leave her state leadership position to join me in New York. But after a year, the offices were moved to Washington, DC into the Universal Ballet Academy. I chose not to move with them and stayed in New York where I found work as a Conference Coordinator for the International Religious Foundation (IRF). In the early ‘90’s, we both worked for various church organizations. I also worked part time at the Manhattan Center Studios. My theater background and relation to AAI provided opportunity to work on the stage crews of church produced entertainment shows for holiday celebrations. The seventh floor studio also became quite renowned as a recording facility for musicians and event space for catering and I worked with staff to support those events.

The reason I stayed in New York was to make a genuine effort to pick up where I left off in Los Angeles with my acting pursuits ten years earlier. I found a great New York TV and commercial acting coach and gave it another try for a good two years. Ostensibly I came to work for AAI but I saw returning to New York as an opportunity to try acting again. However, I was on my own. The Performing Arts department of the church became incredibly cliquish. I could find no person and no department in the church as an advocate or supporter. Even so I gained some momentum in commercial acting and became adept at auditioning. As it happened the birth of my first child coincided with this time so I had to get serious about modern world income. Working in various church businesses offered some pay but the scale was not even close for family life in New York City.

1998-2005

It was in the theater that I had my first experience with computers. The newly built stage and theater building of U of M in downtown Flint housed state-of-the-art sound, lighting and stage craft equipment including a fully equipped scene shop. The lighting board in the theater’s control room (a Westinghouse ‘Recall 100’) featured a built-in computer that recorded and memorized on cassette all the light levels of every dimmer of every lighting cue a director issued for an entire play. It was this exposure to technical theater that sparked my interest in personal computers. In the church while I was living in Pasadena I was introduced to computers again through the church’s ICC events. I learned to use these personal computers to create contact records and mailing lists for clergy. We sent thousands of invitations to clergy all over southern California to come to Korea and learn more about the church. This later provided a strong base for pursuing a career in computer support. I re-tooled and re-trained myself becoming a Microsoft Certified Professional working in corporate, enterprise-level IT for seventeen years now.

Working in the professional world offered a new perspective. After a twenty year commitment to the UC, it was the church leadership which grew into something I could not continue to align myself with. The final straw for me was right after Nan Sook Hong’s story broke alongside the release of her book. Many, including my spouse and me, choose to disassociate with the church. This, along with my growing indifference, naturally began to dissolve the underpinnings of our church-arraigned marriage. Although we sought different types of counseling outside the church, after twenty-two years, we chose to separate and divorce. It was an agonizing decision that we made. Throughout our engagement and marriage years of MFT training instilled within me a military-like duty and devotion to follow the culture and keep the promise of my marriage. All the core beliefs as I saw God had revealed them to me, however, fell by the wayside when it was clear the internal behavior of the Moon family and church leadership did not align with that core. As such my exit and separation from the church has allowed my children to nurture and grow in a very different way. I’ve been blessed with three of the coolest kids a dad could ask for and they are emerging into fine young adults in spite of our choices. (We don’t consider them “BC’s”. They have little exposure to or understanding of the church.)

2005-2012

After Moon’s passing and the ensuing upheaval in the church itself (which, apparently, continues today,) this ongoing division among his family became a deep and sorrowful time for many. But those events confirmed my choice for breaking away from that environment. I seek my own spirituality now in other ways. I’ve long reflected on how to view all this lost time and youth. Clearly this is something I cannot regain. But I can continue my original pursuit of being a good man by living truthfully. I can never again have my own dreams subverted for someone else’s world view. From this perspective, I realize that all this time has not been completely wasted. I’ve experienced things no one else would ever have imagined considering my proximity to the leadership of the church and the events that I witnessed because of it. I recognize that I can no longer feel as though I am beholden to that past and that the mark of a truly courageous man is to move forward and trail-blaze his own path on his own terms. My work now is to ensure my children are financially free to complete their educations and become independent on their own. Soon I will have the time to pursue my own artistic interests once again.

Present Day

There’s a novel’s worth of events I’ve experienced but left untold in my story. At some point I will chronical all of it. Clearly you’ve had your own experiences coming from this environment yourself.

Jen, your sense of freedom now is palpable. I can sense your painful emergence out of suppression into freedom and your ongoing reconciliation with the loss of your feminine agency, as you put it, has profoundly fueled your creativity and sense of artistry. For me it occurred the other way: my first steps on the way towards the fulfillment of, and at the height of my young artistic output, my loss began the moment I entered into that same environment you found to be so toxic. And it became a twenty year journey of self-denial. My consequent transition out of that place, even now, seventeen years later, has severely clouded my sense of loss. Loss of my youth, my young adult life. Loss of my genuine and authentic Self. I feel I’ve been artistically paralyzed in a fog ever since. Indifference caught that spark and all but extinguished it.

In UC parlance, the choice to walk away from my artistic desire then was my “Isaac”. That I did so in the midst of a point in time when I was just stepping into the threshold of my artistic launching – and then changed course – I will never know ‘what could have been’. You could say my longtime reflection on this point has become a block which segued into a myth of a million excuses with ensuing church life and family and more life unfolding and the results of that choice now raining down all around me. But when I read your words prefacing your artwork – your Artist’s Statement - that blew me away.

“What are your blocks?” you ask. For me this question appears so complex. By reading and viewing your words and art, there has been an epic shift in my perception of how I could be freed. That I could go back to that twenty-two year old me and relive those choices differently, well that’s just foolish thinking. I’m seeing it’s time to be courageous and step out and just start creating again. Writing poetry and music again! Perhaps find community theater, see if I have any acting chops left. My challenge now is to be at peace with my choices and to embrace the Now with all my heart. To reconcile those choices I made all those years ago has been so very difficult.

********

I’ll close here in saying Thank You for illustrating your courage, for the uniqueness of your creativity and for the deep and profound beauty you’ve shared. I hope my ramblings, though long-winded, can speak to how your words and art have affected me. It’s a spark that has triggered a long time awakening.

So I would like to give something back, if I may, a poem I wrote to a beautiful ballet dancer. She is a dear, life-long friend who knew that creative young man all those years ago.

To Artistry and the Beauty of Creating, I remain –

Kevin J. Ribble

In Search

In spite of all that I have chosen
Along the path of my own heart
Eclipsed by the shattered dreams of
My own Way
I have never wavered from the sanctity
Of our friendship nor its precious
Innocence and clarity

This vision I will hold for eternity
That line of purity connecting
Me to the One True Self of who I was
And at its other end there is only you
Who witnessed my birth by way of
Blind Naïveté and utter self-forgiveness
There, I (we) walked through a door of what
Was otherwise a deserted path that led to Now

And once again,
I am whole.

Kevin J. Ribble
© All Rights Reserved

The Purity Knife: Sex, Death and Human Trafficking in the Unification Church

2015-08-31T17:06:00.001-07:00

The distinct "ping" of an incoming email on my phone jogged me from my reverie one evening after work. Out of habit I palmed my phone and thumbed through to see the newest delivery.

The subject simply said Reporter.

My curiosity piqued, I opened the message to see what it could possibly be about.

In brief, I was being asked to speak to a journalist on the issue of human trafficking and indentured servitude in the church.

"That was thing?" I wondered, and began to type my response: "Sorry, not sure I have any kind of experiences that relate to that," I began.

Then I paused for a moment. A little spark went off in the back of my brain, and I held it there to examine where it was trying to shed light in the dark cache of my buried memories.

Frowning, I tapped out an erratic rhythm on the delete button.

I began again: "Not sure this is what you're looking for, but I did do STF."

STF was the acronym for Special Task Force (named with the intention of evoking the elite army-unit association), a near-compulsory "leadership training" program that the church tried to institute at the turn of the century.

It was part of a larger program for second generation who had graduated high school, called the Seven Year Course.

The first year of the program consisted of living in a van and fundraising 18+ hours a day while traveling across the country. We were discouraged to ask where the money we handed over each evening went.

Like many of my comrades on STF, I only lasted a handful of months before needing serious medical attention. When I arrived home I spent two bedridden weeks on heavy medication.

In those days of recovery, it felt as though lead coursed through my veins. My body felt too heavy to move. "I wonder if this is what it feels like to die," I would think in my antibiotic-addled haze.

By the time I recovered enough to go back, I began to have panic attacks. I would sob for hours on end, curled up in a ball in my room awash with guilt. "I don't want to go back," I half confessed and begged to my mother. "Please don't make me go back." She didn't.

Others' knees or backs gave out from the days on end of carrying backpacks burdened with product to sell among neighborhood cul-de-sacs and along city highways.

But our injuries were hardly the worst casualties of those long months. It was the slow death of ourselves and, in some cases, the actual loss of life that we experienced that was the worst tragedy.

Living on cheap fast food, getting four hours of sleep a night, constant praying, chanting and force feeding ourselves feeble theological rhetoric began to chip away at the core of who we were.

One afternoon, a young woman of our ranks wandered into a city apartment complex alone. Carrying hundreds of dollars on her person and a backpack of product, she believed that anyone who purchased or donated was setting a condition to be saved by God and Rev. Moon.

Hours later, when she failed to rendezvous at the appointed place, her absence was noticed by her fundraising team.

The media found out what had happened before we did.

As I stared at my unfinished email to the reporter, I thought back to an essay I had written about that day called The Purity Knife, which was published on my photography blog last year:

I walked into a barbershop and began my sales spiel. "Hi sir, I'm fundraising for my church's youth group and -"

The gentleman at the front counter stopped me mid-sentence. "Are you with the Moonies?"

I paused, trying to gauge how I should answer. My heart always jumped at the question, remembering my parents' stories of first generation members being physically threatened, jailed or kidnapped. But, I knew that if I lied I might allow 'Satan to invade.'

"Yes," I answered, hoping that God would protect me for telling the truth.

"Oh shit," he said, shaking his head. "Awww shit; I'm sorry for your loss," he said again with a humane empathy that I rarely encountered when people discovered my affiliation. We were usually cursed at, or thrown out of an establishment, but he didn't make a move to do either.

My confusion must have shown on my face.

He grabbed a remote from the counter, turned the channel on the television to the local news, watching my reaction as the pictures on the screen sunk in. What I saw there defied everything I had ever been taught.

In a monotonous voice the news anchor reported that just a few short miles away another fundraiser, a girl I had considered to be a sister, had been lured into an apartment, sexually assaulted, killed and robbed.

A wave of shock overtook me. I thanked the man in a daze, backing slowly out of the barber shop and fled down the highway of the strange city. Every passing car suddenly sounded like a threat.

We had been taught that we were special, that God would protect us while we were doing His work. How could something like have happened?

I found my way into a local McDonalds and, sobbing, asked to see the manager and borrow the phone. Patrons kindly left their meals to come over and comfort me, but I was wild with fear and could barely speak coherently while I dialed home.

My parents answered and took in my story as I choked out the words. The respondent silence on the line was deafening. Their world had just ruptured a little bit too and they had nothing of comfort that they could offer.

Shortly after that day, hundreds of young people convened for a workshop where leaders did damage control and praised the young woman for being such a pure sacrifice to God and True Parents. Initially leadership denied that she had been sexually assaulted, presumably to keep parents from reacting and removing their children from STF.

Later, when enough news reports were out and had confirmed that undeniable truth, "mediums" claimed that she was "separated from her body very quickly as a way to protect her from pain. She was allowed to escape the trauma of what happened to her to a very large degree."

Leadership encouraged parents not to take their children home, otherwise Satan would be able to claim victory after the tragedy and, publicly, the young woman was given something akin to sainthood.

But privately it was whispered that she had been struggling with her arranged marriage. How else could she have been "opened for attack from Satan"?

As we prepared to go back out into the streets to fundraise, the young women were each armed with a personal alarm and mace. A few sisters said that their mothers had given them Purity Knives, and that all of the mothers should have given one to their daughters.

This ideological relic comes from the old Korean tradition where young of women of high birth wore a knife and were "expected to commit suicide to ‘protect’ their virginity, as opposed to using the knife to defend themselves."

While giving out these purity knives was never an official church custom, Moon did recommend that members carry "a knife to kill yourself before you will be violated" because it was a theological belief that losing one's purity was far worse even than dying.

Moon had said that "Women should always carry a small pistol or razor blade to protect lineage and sexual organ" and that "if you are assaulted, you should either kill yourself or stab the attacker in the stomach with a knife."

I took a few minutes to re-read the essay while my email to the reporter sat unfinished.

Until receiving that email, I had never thought of my experience as trafficking. It was just something that we were expected to do growing up.

To not go on STF was to jeopardize our chances of being accepted by the community and ultimately marrying well in the church. But as a young teen I had never thought of it as coercion or an abuse of power, despite the fact I truly feared the consequences of not cooperating.

I stared long and hard at my screen.

My teeth began to grind and fear welled up in my throat as I stabbed at the delete key once again.

"I think I have a story for you."

Then I hit Send.

--

For more on human trafficking in the Unification Church, see this post by How Well Do You Know Your Moon: http://howwelldoyouknowyourmoon.tumblr.com/post/3234987836/human-trafficking

The un-measurable weight of an orange plastic container.

2015-08-21T15:07:00.001-07:00

I had my first panic attack at thirteen.

Granted, I had no idea that’s what it was called. The un-tamable anxiety that coursed through my body would creep and ebb like tides, unsure of what I was feeling I’d fluctuate between trying to nap it away or pace the large carpeted home my family just moved into.

I believe it was then when I became truly aware of how trapped we were as children; bound to the decisions the adults in our life made regardless of the ways in which it affected us. As the second of five children I was able to exist in a clouded delusion of youth – up until a certain point. My older sister began to experience panic attacks at the age of eight, so I suppose the luxury of my birth order revoked my ability to be fully present to our circumstances until I turned thirteen.

Contextually, our family had just moved into a home within the Mormon district of Mesa, Arizona, and it was to be a much darker presence in our lives than even the mauve/charcoal brick and darkly shuttered windows outside entailed.

It was within the first day we discovered the bark scorpions. Turns out, only our cul-de-sac of the neighborhood sat atop their nest. We would find them scuttling about the house; on the walls, the ceilings, our bedrooms. The first time I was stung I was sleeping in my bed when one lashed out at the back of my knee as it wandered beneath my comforter. The second time was during a foolish attempt to fling a large scorpion off my younger brother’s sandal, when it lashed out and stung the ring finger on my right hand. Try to imagine the pain of a couple angry hornets accompanied by the sensation of said-limb being slammed in a heavy steel door. By themselves the scorpions would be enough to send anyone reeling into a constant state of fear. One decided to ninja my dad in the face when he slept, you never knew when you’d encounter a crunchy tan alien and be sent into a desperate fight or flight response.

On the third day, a matriarch of a local Mormon family came by with an upside-down pineapple cake (seriously, who eats those?) She hadn’t been inside more than five minutes before bursting with curiosity;

“So, did they tell you about the house…?”

Two weeks before my parents had signed the rental agreement for the house in Mesa, the Arizona State Legislature passed a bill allowing property owners the right to withhold information from tenants if they chose not to disclose specific information about their real estate.

The previous tenant had been a solitary man in his thirties who occupied the house for eight or so years. Eventually he had been convicted of being a sexual predator and possessing child pornography, and after a brief stint in jail (fuck you, Arizona,) he returned home and took a gun to his head. Due to nerves or shitty aim his death wasn’t instant, and he dragged himself from the kitchen to the laundry room to bleed out. He was found months later by an ex-girlfriend, whom the neighbors had contacted due to his absence – and an unbelievable smell emitting from the house. That definitely explained the residual odor that no amount of air freshener ever covered, and the tiny splatters on the sections of wallpaper the owners didn’t replace.

Thus began the hatching of panic attacks and depression. They pecked their way through my youthful haze of ignorance and a heavy fear settled in. If I had to pinpoint what exactly set me off, I would say it was the feeling of being trapped. In this particular incident the rental agreement did trap us there. With a racing heart beat and quivering limbs I constantly felt as though I was on the verge of an incomprehensible break down or sob fest. I didn’t want to live there, why couldn’t we leave? We had already moved three times in three years, away from the only friend I had made in Ahwatukee (Phoenix has mini cities) and further from our maternal grandparents who lived in Arcadia. We were the only non-Latter Day Saint family in our part of town, in the only non-adobe-stucco style home, which happened to be haunted by semi-poisonous arachnids and the aroma of a dead pedophile.

My mother perceived the panic attacks, shakes, and gasping for air as pre-teen dramatics, therefore I was left to my own devices to find reprieve. My siblings and I would often walk to the gravel-covered playground of a nearby school we didn’t attend or walk to a convenience store across the road to escape the tension and auditory violence of my parents constantly arguing. At thirteen and fourteen my sister and I had christened the constant sense of anger, fear, and conflict between our parents “the family situation”. A term that would reappear in conversation even up until this past year before my mother’s passing. When I was stuck at home I would wait for my turn on the ancient Dell computer that sat on the unfurnished parlor floor carpet, connected to a screechy dial-up modem. I would waste away hours reading anime fanfiction or chatting on AIM to my new schoolmates from Fountain Hills. If possible, I tried to spend the night with a friend out there as often as I could – the panic attacks were worse at home.

I started seeing a therapist for the first time in my third year living in NYC. It’s funny how unemployment finally allows you access to health insurance, where as being a low-income earner does not. I spent six months with my therapist unpacking my family history, how little faith I had in myself to function in this world outside of my youth in the Unification Church, and mostly how desolate the future looked to me. It was after a two-week drinking binge where my therapist put her foot down and finally suggested medication.

It worked for a while. It felt like a trapeze net that held me above an oubliette, it gave me a higher starting point in which to claw back out of the pit all the while seeing how much further down I could be. I spent about two years on Citalopram (Celexa,) and as my summer apprenticeship in Santa Fe working for the Opera came to a close, I began to feel the depression and anxiety suffocate me like a fish gasping on a dock. My coworker would often let herself into my apartment at the opera-owned complex, and find me lying motionless and staring on the carpet of the living room or my bedroom.

From my understanding, the Unification Church doesn’t hold much bearing on mental health issues and services people may require. Much like my mother’s Bell’s Palsy that resulted from untreated Lyme’s Disease, medical issues like depression, chemical imbalances, bipolar disorder, were often pinpointed as being “attacked” by spirit world. Some impure thought, action, or lifestyle choice of yours opened up your subconscious up to evil spirits who were now controlling you. There were times when I would phone my mother and confess I was too depressed to get out of bed, how everything felt meaningless and that I wished that there was a way to make the pain go away. My mother would quietly listen and then respond explaining my sadness was a result of the way I chose to live my life. If I had chosen the ‘true’ path, stayed within the church, believed in God, and had gotten blessed (“married” in church-lingo,) that none of this would be affecting me.

In church run summer camp events, religious workshops, or on trips to Reverend Moon’s Cheongpyeong retreat center in Korea, Unification Church members would sit in rows and physically beat on each other with fists to release the evil spirits out of each other’s bodies.

My mother never truly admitted to her own depression, or that mental illness also ran rampant through both sides of my family. She even spotted signs of a chemical imbalance in one of my brothers, who showed signs of severe depression as young as three years old, but never acted to have a medical professional look into why a diaper-clad toddler would lay about the floor, motionless and sad. It wasn’t until we were older when we began to look back at my mother’s behavior and see beyond her veneer of cheery optimism; that she too felt unequivocally helpless and depressed.

When I returned to New York from New Mexico I moved to Queens, where Medicaid limited me to lower-economic level health clinics servicing downtrodden outpatients of the outer-boroughs. Without much attention or interest, a psychiatrist with a ‘Monkees’-esque toupee scribbled out a prescription for Zoloft. I was bounced to another Spanish-speaking family clinic in Rego Park where the new psychiatrist wasted no time putting me on Effexor.

As any mental health blog will tell you; Effexor is a bitch to get off of. My friends and boyfriend at the time witnessed the physical effects Effexor-withdrawal had on me at a time when I couldn’t afford the cost of my medication. I began to develop withdrawal symptoms similar to Parkinson’s; involuntary shaking, balance issues, and trouble speaking. Even when on the medicine, the depression and anxiety still followed me around, waiting for a moment to slip in when I was alone in my room wondering what to do, or alternatively standing on the outside perimeter of a swing dance event I couldn’t emotionally engage in.

If I had to circle back and say what I think the root cause is, I’d still go with the feeling of being trapped. I often feel trapped as an introvert, stumbling in my social interactions and chalking up the constant sense of loneliness to being ‘too different’, only now on the other side of the line outside of the Unification Church.

I question my ability as a person to develop the tools to be a successful person. I’m approaching thirty and I find myself unemployed – again. Without a savings account – again. In credit card debt- again. No amount of self-help books, positive thinking women’s online business courses, or pep talks from friends ever boost me above the waters murky surface. Attempts to crank the wheel of my thought processes towards optimism often cracks a demented smile on my face - nothing feels more insincere than telling myself things will pick up. It’s not that I think I’m a pessimist, but ‘realist’ feels more applicable. I can march up and down the hallway of my apartment repeating mantras; “It’s MY time, I’m ready for the NEXT STEP!”

…But the reality often ends up being that I’ve spent another day at home applying to food service or menial-labor desk jobs, because gigs offered to me in my industry all seem to be labeled ‘unpaid’. I can’t tell my roommates how much of a failure I feel like since I had to put rent on a credit card again, and that no new prospects have cropped up. I don’t particularly want to end up broke and unemployable the way my parents have, but I’m not sure how else to qualify it when I’m digging through our apartments communal fridge and discover I’m the only one without food – again. You know what the best medication would be? A good job with a steady wage and a sense of purpose (like that time I was building wigs for cancer patients.)

For both economical and personal reasons I’ve chosen to ween myself off of Effexor – slowly. The mental and physical effects of the withdrawal are still there, resulting in an involuntary twitch of my arm or an entire day spent sleeping to ward off sadness. Jiji, my kitten helps; a purring tuft of black fur nestled against my stomach in the morning temporarily chases the demons away, and I think she’s a major reason I was able to carry after my mom passed away.

Ultimately, the tiny white beads inside the orange Effexor capsules weigh out to be a lot more than milligrams or a piece of mind. For me it’s accepting that biologically/circumstantially depression and anxiety are very real, they’re not God’s way of telling me he’s displeased and letting Satan punish me for choosing the life of an atheist. But like most of my life’s journey, I will have to develop the muscles to survive on my own and I hope I will become strong enough to stand without the pills. Even on my darkest days.

Cultural Perceptions of Beauty

2015-08-20T14:30:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Lani posted about how our culture of origin and the emotional scars it left on her, inhibiting her ability to see her own beauty.

This is a topic that she and I have discussed frequently, as we share similar scars.

The more I dive into this topic, I realize that there is an unfortunate resonance between the way women were valued and categorized in the Unification Church (which my sister touches on her in Ugly post) and how women are valued in our culture at large.

Last year I was invited to New York City to speak on this topic and its intersection with my work and growing up in the church. Because it was in the midst of our mother's struggle with cancer, I never really shared this beyond uploading it to my YouTube channel or posting it as an afterthought on my photo blog.

But here is where it's most relevant. So I'm finally sharing this where it belongs and where, hopefully, it will do the most good.

Huge thank you to my sister and friends who accompanied me to the event, and especially to Lani for filming me:

Below is the transcript of my talk if you would rather read than watch:

Hello thank you so much for having me here. My name is Jen Kiaba and I am a fine art and portrait photographer from Rhinebeck, NY – about 90 miles north of here.

Tonight I want to share a little bit with you about my journey in reframing my perspective on beauty, especially as it pertains to femininity and personal value.

To give you a little bit of background, I am the eldest of five children who were born into the Unification Church. For those of you who are not familiar with the group, it is a religious movement that was started by the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon in Korea and had its heyday in the United States in the 1970s and 80s. In popular culture, Rev. Moon is best remembered as the purveyor of mass arranged marriages.

So tonight I want to talk to you a little bit about what I learned growing up in this group, how the ideology framed my sense of beauty, femininity and value – and finally what I learned from leaving the group and what I feel is applicable to our wider culture's binary views of beauty and value.

In order to give you some perspective on the world of my youth; I have to invite you down the rabbit hole a little bit. Therefore, in the immortal word of Lewis Carrol I will begin at the beginning.

According to church legend, Sun Myung Moon had a revelation on the Easter Morning of his 15^th year while praying on a mountain top, where Jesus appeared to him and revealed to him that dying on the cross had actually been a failure of his mission and it was the young Moon who was supposedly qualified to take up that mission, restore humanity and become the King of Kings.

By the time Rev Moon's church gained traction in the United States, many parents were afraid of losing their children to the organization. And they hired deprogrammers to abduct their children in order to extricate them from this, and other groups. Growing up I heard stories of my parents' peers who had been kept against their will for weeks on end, in slimy motels, sometimes tied to the bed, while deprogrammers read to them from the bible, trying to break the spell that Moon had on them.

My parents were married, along with two thousand other couples, Madison Square Garden on July 1, 1982. I was the first of five children who were raised as members of the Unification Church's Second Generation, who were thought to be the first people born sinless and of God's Lineage.

The theological text governing the Unification Church is called the Divine Principal, which combines eastern mysticism with biblical beliefs. In the church's theology it states that

“Love is an emotional force given by the subject to the object; beauty is an emotional force returned to the subject by the object. The power of love is active and the stimulation of beauty is passive.

In the relationship between God and man, God gives love as the subject, while man returns beauty as the object. Between man and woman, man is the subject, giving love while woman is the object, returning beauty.”

From this theological basis I learned that as a woman I was object, to give beauty was my main purpose, and that it was a passive behavior. I learned that to be woman was to be mailable and to remain as unformed as possible until such time as I was given to a husband of Rev. Moon's choice.

In the Unification Church, one didn't date. We referred to one another as brother and sister in order to emphasize platonic relations and dissociate ourselves from hormonal, sexual and emotional urges.

Sex before marriage was absolutely out of the question. The Church had a word for that: falling. To fall was the greatest sin that could be committed. The church also believed that the fall of man was a sexual sin, perpetrated by Eve having a spiritually sexual relationship with the angel Lucifer.

Therefore we had a very interesting cultural dichotomy that we were raised in. While we were taught that the ideal role of woman was to give beauty to man, our subject, we were also taught to believe, like in many religions, that sin had entered the world through a woman.

Thus it was a woman's role to cut off from sexual temptation – and essentially her sexuality as a whole. Purity was the defining value for a woman and it was through this lens that we were taught we would eventually be able to express our value: our beauty, once we were married. We were taught to dress, act, and think modestly until that time, so as not to lead men into temptation.

It took me until 21, after being coerced into an arranged marriage and then fighting for two years to get out of that marriage, to gather the emotional and financial resources to leave the group. Interestingly enough, the moment that I knew I was going to leave, was while I was on a trans-atlantic flight from JFK to Oslo to visit my then-husband, and the young woman in the seat next to me handed me a few beauty magazines to occupy my time. She was from Romania, and therefore most of the magazines' content was illegible to me.

However the images that the magazine contained showed my a very different world than what I had been raised within. The women in these magazines looked like agents of their own lives, women who owned their sense of identity, sexuality, and beauty.

It took me many years after leaving the group, and assimilating to the current culture to realize that actually many of the issues that I had with my religious group of origin can be found within the our secular beauty culture and gender norms.

We live in a culture that looks at women's value, in particular, from a very binary point of view: hot or not, slut or prude. The ideas of a woman's value coming from an arbitrary standard of beauty is not a foreign one, nor is it one that exists only within extremist religious groups.

Women's bodies, and their sexuality, are politicized. Every time you look at the news, it seems that there is new proposed legislation concerning women's sexual engagement, reproduction and access to contraception.

There is also a resurgence of “purity culture” in the more right wing religious groups, which has helped give rise to some of this political discourse. Within this new purity culture, we also see the phenomenon of things like the Purity Balls, in which daughters pledge their virginity to their fathers until they are married.

Therefore, it seemed to me, that the same problematic equation was presenting itself again and again. Woman as object. Woman as passive. Woman as either completely pure, until an outside authority figure deemed it ok for a woman to engage in sexual activity, and then it must only be within certain culturally approved constructs – or woman as completely sexually available and in many cases as an object.

Unsurprisingly that this kind of objectification has been linked by psychologists to shame, depression, substance abuse, and sexual dysfunction.

As a photographer who works mainly with women, much of my goal is to facilitate a conversation around self and body love before and during the photographic process. My goal as a photographer is to give people – women primarily – a safe place to witness themselves and their unique beauty without judgement or subjective standard.

The biggest problem with that, was that it had to start with me. I had to walk my own walk and truth be told, for many years I was not comfortable sharing my story or turning the lens on myself. I realized that I had to change that and from that place came my newest body of work: Burdens of a White Dress; it addresses these pervasive cultural norms that I see around femininity both in my childhood religion and our beauty culture.

The first piece that I created is called “Hold your Peace,” because in a conventional marriage contract one is asked to confirm that they have come to the marriage agreement free from any duress or any obligation.

Hold Your Peace by Jen Kiaba

My experience lacked that confirmation, but I have also seen how many women enter into culturally approved feminine roles under psychological duress and obligation without having been given the opportunity to explore and address their own needs and goals first.

Within this image I wanted to address the idea that women are bound by the cultural notions of purity and virginity as virtues that are something for a man to claim as his domain either as a father, or a husband.

My next image addressed what goes on for young women as we are raised in these cultural norms. This one is called “My Mind is a Lie” and it asks the viewer to really consider what is at stake with this culture.

My Mind is a Lie by Jen Kiaba

Essentially we ask both men and women to remove their logic and humanity from the equation as we fill their heads with these dehumanizing constructs of what it means to be beautiful and desirable and that that is the core of where a woman's value lies.

This image is called “At the Helm” and it looks at the absolute loss that I felt in navigating my way out of a controlling environment: In the middle of a murky fog, without a paddle, left on my own.

At the Helm by Jen Kiaba

Unfortunately, as in the first image, the subject is blindfolded. This plays two roles in the unfolding on the images. Not only is she unable to see and navigate around her, but she is also dehumanized by her identity being obscured. Young women today, without many other options being presented to find value within are also like this figure, lost and passive and looking for outside influence to guide them, with their true identities obscured

I want to jump forward ahead a few images in the chronology of this project. This image is called “Matched,” the photograph deals with an overarching theme from my religious childhood and the ways in which women were raised and treated, expected to come to the marriage state as completely pure and malleable.

Matched by Jen Kiaba

Uncondoned sexual activity aligned us with murderers in our theology. In that sense many of us did not make it to be married without “blood” on our hands.

But again I have had to reflect on how this ideology is also present in the world at large. Certainly we see this treatment of women in other cultures, but even in our own we could point to many instances of women being devalued for their sexual experience and how much these ideas hurt women.

To take that idea even further and examine how it plays out in our culture, I want to speak about briefly tonight is one that I call “The Purity Knife.” It references a time in my mid-teens when I was sent out fundraising for the church. Living in vans, we travelled across the country selling trinkets as a part of our "fundamental spiritual education."

The Purity Knife by Jen Kiaba

While I was fundraising I found out that one of my friends had been found dead, after being sexually assaulted and strangled. The church leaders did their best to cover up the incident and urge young people to stay in the fundraising program. As we prepared to go back out into the streets to fundraise, the young women were each armed with a personal alarm and mace; some young women's mothers had given them Purity Knives. This ideological relic comes from the old Korean tradition where young of women of high birth wore a knife and were "expected to commit suicide to ‘protect’ their virginity, as opposed to using the knife to defend themselves."

And this was an idea that was pervasive in our church culture, as Moon did recommend that members carry "a knife to kill yourself before you will be violated.” According to Moon, "if someone is trying to invade you, you would rather kill yourself than go through the fall. At least you won't go to hell that way. Even if you die, you don't go to hell.”

The victim shaming in that ideology is horrifying. And yet America itself has seen many instances of terrible victim shaming – with the Stuebenville case as simply one of the most recent in memory. So women are being raised to be passive objects, beautiful for man's consumption, they are also being told that their choices in matters of dress, drink and behaviors means that they deserve to be victimized and acted upon.

So at the end of the day I want to ask the question: is that beauty? Is beauty what our culture is so pervasively trying to convince us it is? A commodity to be owned and subjugated. Or is it something more intangible and less binary than the hot or not, pure or sullied, virgin or whore, subject or object, and even male or female scale that we have been presented?

To me, beauty is a spark that exists within a person, not something that can be owned or objectified.

And so I want to leave you with a few final pieces and a call to action: simply to open your minds to the varied shades of beauty. That it can be powerful, it can be clean and it can be dirty. It can be conventional and it can be unexpected. This piece is in its sketch phases, and it is called “Rewiring” which is something that I hope we can all do.

Rewiring by Jen Kiaba

We need to emerge anew in order to perceive beauty in its varied and manifold forms. I believe that our ideas of beauty need to be completely transformed, and in that way our full spectrum of humanity can be experienced and expressed. Thank you.

Ugly

2015-08-19T16:14:00.002-07:00

The light in the dressing room of the community playhouse was low-budget fluorescent, and I leaned into the mirror to glean away dried-out mascara clumps from my lashes. David, a flamboyant red headed performer in the ensemble was eyeing me as I stood up straight and blinked away some strays.

“You know,’ he mused ‘you have the facial structure of a drag queen.” There was an uncomfortable pause in the dressing room with the rest of the teen theater group. “But with nice makeup.” He Added.

The truth is that I never have needed reminders that I’m not considered pretty, or not ‘conventionally-attractive’. Ninety-five percent of the time I hate myself vehemently and think I am one of the most grotesque people on the planet. Add a twenty-pound weight gain, a pimple break out, and a slouching posture I’ll practically feel suicidal when I force myself to look in the mirror.

In issue #3 of Sandy, ‘SLUT’, I wrote about some of my experiences being born and raised within a family that followed Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s cult, The Unification Church. Within their church culture, it was an easily divided hierarchical system of who the REAL chosen people were and the viable attributes they possessed. Being a Korean, Reverend Moon proclaimed the Koreans, not the Jews, were the new chosen people. In speeches he would revere the beauty and the gracious character of all Asian women, and as a result many male first generation followers vied to be matched to a Korean, Japanese, or Chinese wife. Many of the children I grew up alongside were White-Asian mixes, and to be a cute ‘half-ie’ was a badge of honor. My own father was no exception, and had articulated to my mother early on in their engagement that he wished Reverend Moon had matched him to a Korean or Japanese wife.

American Caucasian women were considered the worst of the draw for the matching ceremonies Moon organized. White women were described as selfish money-driven creatures that had sex for pleasure. In a speech Moon gave on September 8th, 1996, he declared; “American women feel superior to and scorn prostitutes, but in reality these prostitutes are earning money, this is their job. However, American women are even worse because they practice free sex just because they enjoy it.” Ending up with an American woman meant you were further away from the Messiah’s true blood lineage, and as a result 100% Caucasian/Western daughters of my generation (2nd generation) were less desirable as a match partner for sons who were of age to marry.

In Tina Fey’s new Netlfix comedy series about a cult survivor, ‘The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’, they completely omit the process in which a former cult member has to emotionally and mentally break out of everything they’ve been raised to believe, and then how painful the process is to readjust to a world that thinks you’re bizarre. ‘Operation Re-adjust’ did not help my self-esteem at all, as girls who look like me are neither tops in the Unification Church nor in secular society’s media controlled imagery.

As a human genetic cocktail of Ashkenazi Jew, Syrian, Euro-mutt, and Native American, I mostly resemble my father in Semitic features; I have a large semi-crooked nose and wide gaps between my teeth. I’ve heard a variety of slurs thrown at me. Some more common like “big nose” or more creative depictions such as the archaic “gap-toothed Jewess.” Some of the men I have slept with were generous enough to inform me that I belonged in the ‘weird face – hot body’ category, (sometimes colloquially referred to as “butter face” {everything but-her face.})

In both spheres of my life that I had a foot planted in I simply wasn’t pretty or desirable enough. I didn’t belong to either camps of the chosen people, neither the Koreans nor Jews, and my conspicuously different nose and teeth never made me highly desirable for romantic companionship in any of my social circles. I hit a point in my life where I felt something within my reach had to be done to fix it. I signed up for makeup classes in a small boutique in a town across the river from me, I studied contouring videos on YouTube, and was constantly pulling ads with pretty makeup out of magazines. I’d sit on the floor of my room with pharmacy bought makeup and try to recreate what I was looking at, hoping that enough concealer, contouring, and eye shadow would make me beautiful in the short term.

For my long-term hopes I desire more than anything to undergo rhinoplasty and get braces. At one point I even "contemplated" becoming an escort in order to earn money for the extraordinary cost of the procedures. I spent way more time than I’d like to admit on RealSelf.com pouring over testimonies, and envisioning myself looking more like Rachel McAdams. I felt no shame over wanting to change myself, to me it made sense biologically since we trust and vie for friends and partners who are more attractive. Beautiful people often even receive more promotions at work than the rest of us. I wanted to feel loved and socially accepted like all the popular girls I remember in school, and as an adult I wanted to feel desirable and revered.

The ultimate irony in this all is that I’m a career makeup artist and wig builder for people suffering from hair loss. My job is to help actresses, singers, brides, and cancer patients to feel beautiful and accepted by society, but I can’t accept myself. On my days off I’d feel too hideous to get out of bed and meet up with my friends, no amount of makeup or the right outfit could make me feel anything but fat and ugly. When at work I felt like an incredible phony giving women makeup tips or pretending I had any understanding of what society wanted.

My boyfriends would tell me I’m healthy, adorable, and beautiful – even when I wake up in the morning with frazzled hair and raccoon eyes. They'd tell me how my smile lights up my face, and how sexy I look in just one of their t-shirts. They'd hold me and tell me I’m perfect the way I am, and that I wouldn’t be myself if I had plastic surgery. I appreciate the love and support, but then I develop incredible resentment towards the world for encouraging men and women alike to love ourselves how we are, but then bombard us in the media with all the things we must need and have to be truly loved.

It will take time to pull myself out of the pit of misery and self-hatred I’ve spent years in, but a ray of hope hangs above the vanity in my room. In a frame hangs a recent photo of my sister, my mother in her teens, and my grandmother’s picture from high school. I love them all dearly; I see them in my face and myself in theirs. If I can love and respect them more than anything, then maybe I will love myself some day.

In the end

2015-08-10T13:44:00.000-07:00

Her left hand was cold and motionless. I intertwined my pudgy, pink fingers between her delicate icy ones, trying not to look at the missing fingernails or last vestiges of ones the chemotherapy hadn't rotted away. It was so hard sit and listening to the water-choked gurgling that was her breathing. I hope you never have to listen to someone drown from the fluid in their own lungs.

It had only been a week since my mother had broken the news to us. Sitting upright, skinny but with a swelling belly of liquid bile from her failing liver; hospice was finally being brought in she said. While she never explicitly said that this was the end, we knew there was no longer an occasion to feign hope of a miraculous turn-around. Anger rose and fell between tears of disappointed acceptance. She'd never live to plant next year’s garden, never live to start that business she always talked about, never live to meet grandchildren. After that devastating meeting with my mom, siblings, and uncle, gathered around my mother's blanket-laden perch on the couch, my sister and I returned to her house to stew over the inevitable. We sat paused over cups of tea, between bouts of haunted silence we posed questions of what could or should have been done – and more importantly what do we do now?

One of my mother's last requests was to have a funeral service and burial in the style of her religious community; the ‘Seung Hwa’ ceremony of Reverend SunMyung Moon’s Unification Church. Funeral services of any faith are costly, and the estimated costs of my mother’s impending burial was weighing heavily on our minds; there simply wasn’t any money to cover the services.

Seung Hwa of Reverand Moon's eldest son, Hyo Jin, who passed away from a heart attack. Yay cocaine.

My parents had spent most of their life employed in the service of Reverend Moon and his ‘providence’. Once joining the cult back in the 1970’s both had only ever held employment in one of the companies or organizations that belonged to the Moons. The time commitments they made that didn’t fall into free labor category never resulted in pension or a retirement plan - they also never amounted to much income. In fact, it was more often than not that my paternal grandmother paid the rent on whatever home our family resided in at the time, purchased new cars for my father, and paid off the expensive student loan debt he acquired from a PhD he never used lucratively. Thus, with most of the financial bases covered, it gave my father the ability to strut about in a suit with a briefcase, rub shoulders with important members of the church, and have an office in the Unification Theological Seminarywithout the added pressure of terms such as ‘401K’, ‘retirement’, or 'affordable healthcare' that wasn’t government sponsored. My father could spend the measly income he earned on new toys for himself such as new MAC laptops and Nexus cellphones, while my mother watched from the couch as she lay dying from the lack of care that Medicaid could provide. Services from Sloane Kettering or The Cancer Centers of America simply were not within our family’s financial means.

This was also true for covering the costs of my mom’s Seung Hwa funeral ceremony. None of my siblings worked jobs where we could tuck thousands of excess income into savings, and my mother’s brother worked as a translator in Mexico for less money than any of us were pulling in. The committee of Unification Church members who were helping to organize my mother’s funeral proceedings came over to discuss details, and when they mentioned the cost of her Seung Hwa services a member looked to my father and asked if there was money set aside to pay for the funeral. He deflected responsibility by insinuating that my mother’s recently deceased parents had set aside funds for her in a bank account, when my usually mild- mannered uncle cut in with “No. There is not a fund.”

At one point my sister was asked to take out a private loan in her name to cover the costs, which seemed unfair as she still carried the weight of student loans. One of my younger brothers had offered to throw all of his savings to help cover part of the funeral, and my uncle suggested we reach out to the Unification Church community for help. As an outsider from the church who hasn’t been exposed to its culture of financial vampirism, it seemed like a logical proposition to my uncle – after all in the real world one’s religious community is meant to provide support to those in times of need. But how could we ask that of Reverend Moon’s ‘first generation’ of followers? People who had spent years living out of 15 passenger vans and fundraising for his cult movement byselling trinkets to strangers.

My mother with the Reverend and Mrs. Sung Myung Moon at a CAUSA event.

People who had tithed most of their income to Moon’s church - instead of paying for their kid’s braces, paying for their children’s education, learn how to invest the money they did have, or setting aside for retirement or worse. This is the conundrum many of us ‘second generation’ face as we approach our late twenties or early thirties. We, the children of parents who chose ‘God’ and a false idol over their own means, are now left with the realization our parents are entering their senior citizen years with no monetary means to support them.

After the meeting with our mother concerning the impending involvement of hospice, my sister Jennifer looked up from her cup of tea-gone-cold and asked; “What do you think about crowd funding?”

As in Amanda Palmer-and-‘The Art of Asking’-crowd funding? Kickstarter and IndieGogo? Was that possible for people like us? I mean, it made sense for the whirlwind/creative/feminist/musical force clad in a kimono+arm warmers that was Amanda *Fucking* Palmer, but who were we to ask the people of the internet for help?
What would make anyone want to reach out and help us when it seemed this was a situation of my parent’s own making? Could you even make a crowdfunding page for something concerning medical bills or anything unrelated to the receiving of a preconceived product or service? If we had we known that in less than two weeks my mother would pass on we would have begun investigating options sooner.

We took an evening to meditate on the possibility of a crowd funding page, and by the next morning my sister had set up a page on GiveForward.com with a campaign acknowledging that our mother was losing her eight-year battle with breast cancer, and explained the financial predicaments we found ourselves in with wanting to fulfill her last wishes.

Admittedly, I was incredible nervous…and ashamed to ask for the help of others. Many of my friends and coworkers were unaware of the religious cult I was raised in, nor my family’s financial/power dynamics that had resulted in the Give Forward page for my mother’s funeral. After estimates from the local funeral home in town and online research about the average funeral costs in 2014, we decided to set the campaign goal number to $10,000. The account was set up where we would receive email notifications if the campaign page was shared on social media or if it had received a donation, and to my surprise we pulled in well over two-thousand dollars on the first day of it being online - more than $1,500 of it coming from people in my specific social circle. My mom passed away two days after we launched the GiveForward page, and her Seung Hwa funeral services were scheduled for three days after she died.

We surpassed the ten thousand dollar goal with the help from our coworkers, our friends, our friends parents, our significant others and their parents, and even some members of the Unification Church who found it within their means to give money in tribute to a friend. Ultimately, every penny donated through the crowd funding was used to cover the cost of the funeral services and the headstone placed above my mother in Tivoli, NY. We are unsure where the checks and money that were handed to my father at the funeral went, yet he asked us to make a donation from our crowd fund money to give to the Barrytown Unification Theological seminary and to those who presided over the arrangements.

Many Unification Church members were dressed in white or light colors (as do Koreans at a funeral,) when we arrived at my mother's Seung Hwa. A man who had never met my mother emceed the services, making grand proclamations about her character and dedication to God. Those who knew her and planned the Sueng Hwa for my mother, knew so little about her that they chose ‘America, The Beautiful’ as a funeral hymn – because of her allegiance to America? A man whom both my parents had worked for in many capacities over the years, Dr. Bo Hi Pak, did not attend but sent a letter meant to be about my mother but instead glorified “True Father” (Reverend Moon.) Someone even had the audacity to hire a photographer to document the entire event, a young teenager whom my father waved over to the family table at the funeral reception to “take a group photo”. Despite being an innocent party, I ripped the teen photographer a new one as he attempted to photograph me with a table of my friends. Who wants to pose for pictures on the day they bury their mother?

I am sitting here in a coffee shop in Queens writing this 6 months to the day of my mother’s passing. My love and gratitude goes out to the friends of mine who went out of their way to be there with us on the day of her funeral; those who dropped their previous engagements and drove hundreds of miles out of the way to be there. My love goes out to the ones who couldn’t make it, but sent money and love even if they themselves were experiencing battles with cancer themselves. So much love to the friends who sat with us and witnessed one of the strangest events they’d ever experience - a Unification Church Seung Hwa is nothing like what one’s contemporary understanding of what a funeral should be.

There are days where I have to pull out a brown leather-bound photo album off my bookshelf to remember who she really was. It was the last gift my mom gave to me, compiled with the remaining energy she had before she became bedridden. The album is full of pictures of my mother and I together, beginning with a photo of her in a Mexican-style day dress with her hands laid on a 9-month baby bump. By pouring over these pictures I am reprogramming my brain to remember the love, the dreams, and the flaws she was as a person before she became before she lay cold in the hospice hospital bed in her bedroom. I held onto her still hand, feeling the echoes of butterfly twitches that pulsed in her wrist tendons after there was no more breath to breathe, only fluid.

A Very Long Year

2015-08-09T11:00:00.003-07:00

Well dear readers, Lani and I are back after a very long hiatus. We spent this last year very quietly, saying our goodbyes to our mother and trying to heal our relationships as much as possible in our last months together.

Out of respect for our mother and her declining health, we decided to make the blog private. It had become a little too well known amongst some of the church community and we felt like she didn't need the judgement from her community hanging over her.

Tomorrow will mark six months since she died. Both my sister and I sat by her side in the early morning hours as she passed.

I still haven't had the strength to write about those last months. But it's a story that needs to be told because many young people, like my sister and myself, will face painful circumstances like ours.

When our mother died there was no money for her funeral. Both she and my father had given everything over the years to the church. I was asked to take out a personal loan to pay for the $10k+ it would cost, just for a simple burial. That was something I just couldn't do.

Lani is writing about how we were able to give our mom the small funeral she would have wanted. I'll add to the story in time, because like I said: our story won't be the last of its kind. As our parents' generate ages with no safety net provided by the church, it will be the second generation that will have to figure out how to care for them.

While you're waiting for the new post, Lani and I do have a few things for you to check out.

Lani wrote two excellent articles in this past year. The first one was for Sandy 'Zine, which unfortunately didn't publish the article online. But you can order a copy here, and we got permission to reprint it here.

The second article was for XOJane and can be found here.

I wrote a some articles as well. One was for The Huffington Post, and a few were for Conscious Living TV.

I also completed a body of photographic work specifically about growing up as a woman in the Unification Church:

Please also take a moment, if you haven't already, to watch the video of Sam Park's speech given at the 2014 International Cultic Studies Association Conference. This is perhaps the most important recent event in Unification Church history, as Rev. Moon's illegitimate child gives deep insight into the origins of the organization.

Until next time,

❤,

Jen

Oh My Talking Bird

2014-07-29T17:11:00.001-07:00

My mother is dying.

After a few years in remission, her breast cancer tore free from its slumbering cocoon and bled into her spine, riding the expressway throughout her body and settling everywhere and dotting her scans with warnings.
There is no cure for cancer of the spine, only palliative care is offered so that you're more comfortable puking with unbearable migraines while you slowly die.

She phoned the other day and informed me (days late) that she'd begun oral chemotherapy, because bad news is better festered - like the time it took her three days to email me that my grandmother had passed away.

If death has to take her before she is sixty I wish that life had at least bestowed her with happiness, security, and fortune. However, much like her mother before her, she never got the love or care she deserved.

As a tiny girl she was sexually molested by a friend of my grandparents. As a teen she blew away her absent mom and critical dad with lines of coke. When her alcoholic fiancé passed away she turned to the Catholic Church, worked in an orphanage in Mexico, and eventually found Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church.

Her life until I was old enough to be cognizant is mostly photographs or bullet points in my mind. I know that while fundraising/trying to start a Unification Church center with a friend in West Virginia, she contracted Lyme's disease, which was left untreated due to living out of a van and trying to earn money for a fat Korean billionaire.
When it developed into Bell's Palsy, church leaders had convinced her that her faith in God and in the "messiah" Reverend Moon was faltering, her paralyzed face and body was the result of evil spirits attacking her - instead of negligence and manipulation.

My parents were matched by Reverend Moon whose stubby fingers directed the will of God like a divine laser. Later they were married in the July 1st 1982 mass wedding at Madison Square Garden. My father was disappointed, as like many western men in the church he wanted an Asian wife. My mother was also reticent as red flags about my fathers schizophrenic and Asperger-like behavior tendencies loomed towards mental abuse.
There are no official wedding photographs of my parents. My father had the chicken pox on the day of the wedding. God's divine laser cast a pox upon the match, which plagued all of us even as the scabs faded.

Jen Kiaba Photography

To be fruitful and multiply is standard practice amongst most major religions even if they haven't stemmed from a sex cult. My family was no exception as there was eventually five of us. My father had no real interest in children, keeping an office to himself in the basement only to emerge for meals, to beat one of us with a belt for crying or being too loud, or to hit, criticize, or gaslight my mother. However, my mother said we were the best thing to ever happen to her.

As a small child living in rural Virginia, we were away from the Washington DC church community. It was then that I deemed that being married meant loneliness. My father often stayed in DC for his employment in the church, or he slept on the pull out couch in the basement.
I remember my mom laying in pain on their large bed, bleeding out a miscarriage and wearing a cerulean t shirt with an iron-on t shirt transfer of kittens. I watched my sister tend to her with a hot water bottle and I realized my mom didn't have any friends.
It was always her and us. At home or on vacation, after school or during summer she was always present for her children but isolated from the outside world.

She isolated herself from the concept of self care, never allowing herself nice clothes or haircuts beyond the services of the $20 mall salons. "Live for the sake of others". She revoked her financial responsibilities to my father who handled the taxes, the bills, and managed to put credit cards and utilities in her name which went unpaid and eventually trashed her credit.

I also remember her telling us that she never planned to live to old age, which I thought about a lot. I thought about it when she went away to a health center in San Diego and my father told us as he microwaved our "Kid Cuisine" meals that we her five children had made her go away.
I thought about it when she got another severe case of Lyme's Disease when I was older, and when she was diagnosed with breast cancer the first time. I thought about it as she lay in bed tired and depressed, or when the stress induced eczema ate holes in her palms and opened ulcers on her fingers.

Through radiation and chemo my mom still tried to trek through her first battle with cancer, cooking dinner and doing laundry because it was her duty - but mostly because no one offered to help. My father mentally checked out, buying himself new laptops and phones to distract himself By the time my uncle flew up from Mexico to become her caretaker, my sister and I were burnt out on splitting the duties of motherhood on top of working and going to college full time. But the men in the family never stepped up, Moonie patriarchy dictates the role of domestic responsibilities falls to women.

Like fatherhood care taking duties, my dad took a back seat to attending to my mothers illness. Towards the end of our phone conversation a few days ago she mentioned that my father has reprimanded her for being too tired to cook dinner. Care taking was a woman's job so he and the two brothers who still live at home were not explicitly inclined to take equal weight of responsibility, and my father had been fine with his mom taking care of him for years. My parental grandmother paid our rent so he could freelance low paying jobs within the Unification Church. She bought him brand new cars so his money could go towards whatever new toy apple happened to produce. She paid off $100,000 of his student loans so he could cleanly inherit her money, while my own mother often borrowed money from us for groceries.

"How far back would I have to go to set things right?" she'd ask when I'd rail against her neglectful marriage. She doesn't expect Jesus to high-five her for bearing through life's hardships when she does pass on, but it is almost a sense of defeat and desolation than religious obligation that keeps her where she is. We just need to let go of the train and watch it hurtle down the tracks toward the cliff. After all, what could be done to change anything now? A miracle or a million dollars would be too little too late and we can't see beyond the tragic ending to a sad story.

"It is where the loneliness of life has led us."

First Slice

2013-05-22T19:45:00.001-07:00

After 3.5 years living in New York City I finally broke free. In preparation for a move out west, a friend helped me move storage items from my NYC apartment to my parent's house upstate.

While passing through Kingston, NY towards the rotary circle, there's a Holiday Inn that sits on the side of the road leaving towards the exit to the Rhinecliff bridge. I no longer internally cringe passing the Holiday Inn, but there are landmarks in my hometown area that quietly stand like large tombstones.

The Summer of Cheescake began as the year we spent living in Bridgeport came to a close. New Eden Academy would be closing as a boarding school for Unification Church kids, it would be absorbed by the University of Bridgeport and turned into a day school with open enrollment. After my sister's graduation, I remember staring at the refrigerator in my mother's apartment and recalling the pungent smell of the dish soap we used to scrub and scour every surface of the apartment upon our arrival a year prior. None of us knew where we were going to end up now that my mother didn't have a job and that we wouldn't have a home in a few days.

The furniture we'd brought from Arizona we moved out of the empty rooms at the end of the 3rd floor hall and into a storage unit, and with the help of our Grandfather and his friend in Pleasantville, my mother acquired a navy blue mercury villager mini van, which would become somewhat of our home base for the summer.

An 'aunt' of ours who lived in Yonkers offered us her home while she was away, a place for a single mother and her five kids to crash for a week or so while before we'd wander aimlessly to our next location. We never went outside much, parts of Yonkers wasn't safe, so I'd spend the hours of the day in the dark house perusing our 'aunt's' bookshelves or staring out the window. The window that let in the best light looked out to the driveway and the garbage cans, where an occasional rat would skitter to about.

Eventually my mother was hired as a cook for a Unification Church owned camp on Bear Mountain called Camp Sunrise. She was given a cabin within a few hundred feet of the kitchen and dining area. It was tiny with orangeish-brown faux wood paneling walls, a few small rooms, and a closet that smelled of deceased chipmunk. I shared a room with my mother for the first few nights we were there, hoping I'd find some stability in the quietly snoring form of my mom, not understanding that she felt the same overwhelming fear and anxiety that I did. We were all adrift and every day was exhausting treading the disquietude.

Before the groups of Moonie children arrived for summer workshops, it was only our family and the families of staff members. The groundskeeper, Mr. B, a mentally disturbed vet who was discharged from the service had found a haven in the Unification Church. He didn't believe in the values or principles of the cult much, but it gave him a petite Japanese wife and a community in which to embed himself in. However, he wasn't much fond of other people,he was prone to bursts of anger manifesting in physical violence and verbal abuse. His inability to relate was often directed at us, once he exploded in anger at my brother Josh and threatened to beat him with a crowbar he had in his fist. For the weeks we spent on Bear Mountain we had a point of giving Mr. B a wide berth, and often hid in the under brush of the woods when he would pass by.

When the campers arrived it was easier to distance the panic attacks. I was placed in a cabin of girls my own age where we'd participate in a variety of camp-related activities like normal children; art, singing, sports, swimming, and hikes. Additionally, many hours of our days were spent in the hot meeting halls, attending workshops on The Divine Principle, maintaining purity, the blessing (our marriage ceremonies), and Reverend Moon's mission for us. If we dozed in and out of consciousness during the lectures, we were encouraged to forcibly pat/knock ourselves or our sisters/brothers, as evil spirits were attacking us and dissuading us from God's path and his words with the sensation of sleepiness.

Aunt DJ, a loudmouthed Texan church member who was somewhat of an uncouth, church fundamentalist made herself known during our weeks at camp, as she would participate as a church elder and lecture from any available pulpit, doling out the black and white dogmatic laws God's will from her pointed fingers and flapping arms. She made herself popular among curious girl campers, reading their fortunes from their palms and filling their heads with projected preconceived notions. Many of the girls would later attend her boarding school out in Texas, a few she would shepard away from me after she caught wind of me loosing my purity many years later.

The trembling uneasiness creeped back in on the last day the campers left, the distractions from my anxiety in the form of my camp friends were leaving, and I would be left with the reality of a homeless family and an unforeseen future. My sister and I along with one of my brothers would sit on a concrete wall on the edge of the lake, where we'd attempt to fish with sticks, string, and clothes pins. One of the few safe havens from camp employees, we'd sit baking in the sun, contemplate our family's fate and retrace everything that had preceded Camp Sunrise.

Camp had to end, and we were evicted from the cabin and packed our mini van full of our possessions. The rest of the summer and early Autumn we would spend homeless, hoping from motel to hotel to motel, surviving on money our Grandfather would place in my mother's bank account. My mother would never mention to the check-in desk she had five children, so we were trained to split into groups, one who would attend my mother into the hotel with some luggage and hotel key cards, while the others would be snuck in through back entrances.

We migrated north to the Hudson Valley, not because our father's mother resided in Wappingers Falls, but because there was a moderate community of church members who resided in upper Dutchess County near Barrytown where the Unification Theological Ceremony is. In that time we stayed in a motel in Fishkill, and an entire month at the Holiday Inn in Kingston, NY split up between times at other motels in the area. With no woods or lake to escape to, we had the jacuzzi near the pool, and the small restaurant within the hotel.

If we had a tiny bit of money we could spare, our mother would either treat us or hand us cash so we could sit in the vinyl booths of the restaurant and split a piece of New York cheesecake. Drizzled in a red glaze, the rich sweetness would eventually symbolize the one passable high point of a dark time in our lives. There would be nothing to do but ruminate over our family's situation between thin, rationed bites of cheesecake.

Our childhoods were a constant exposure to crisis mode. The past two years had seen my family move into a scorpion filled house in Mesa where a convict had taken his own life, spattering the wallpaper in the kitchen with his blood and soaking the house in the smell of his death. It was in that house around my 8th grade graduation where my mother became convinced my father was sexually molesting our younger brothers, and where she slipped a 'Dear John' note into his briefcase before he left for Korea. In urgency she had us pack up all our belongings, split from my father, and flew across the country to Connecticut's great ghetto, landing us among the sharpest teeth of Reverend Moon's community. Now homeless, and packed into a hotel room, it felt as though there could be no bright future for the rejects of God's chosen people.

One morning in early September, my mother was away across the river in Red Hook house hunting. With all of the children more or less awake we flipped on the television, but found every station had images of two huge towers in New York City, one that was smoking at the top. We were all glued to the TV, watching headlines race across the screen, when another plane crashed into the second tower. By the time my mom returned to us hours later she was in hysterics. She had been terrified she wouldn't be able to return across the river to us, as many bridges had been shut down or blockaded by police once the WTC attacks were confirmed terrorism.

It would take us almost a month more to find a house in Red Hook, and in the interim we moved into an apartment within a Unification Church family's house off 199. They were the most Christian of any the Barrytown families, as a majority of them shunned my mother for arriving on the scene without a husband, broke, and needing help. Broken families were like diseased people, and it was best to avoid them in case they could infect you with their bad spiritual atmosphere.

Much like the time we spent in the hotels, our family all slept on the floor in one room, but I had gotten accustomed to the sound of our collective breathing as I fell asleep every night. Occasionally I would ask to borrow my sister's CD player, and lay down listening to *NYSNC's 'No Strings Attached' album. I had convinced my 15 year old self that if I really bought into the lyrics of 'Do Your Thing', I would be brave enough to accompany my mother to the local high school and enroll myself late.

While she filled out the necessary paperwork to enroll me at the main office, I watched the high school kids watching me as I stood awkwardly in the office outside the hallway. I unconsciously appeared like a homeless kid with my unruly bushy hair and mish-moshed clothes that happened with be clean, articles that were an eclectic mixture of the faux hip-hop lifestyle of New Eden kids and the camp t-shirts. A gaggle of girls studied me as they walked past and leaned in to whisper amongst themselves as they walked past to class. Hearing them giggle at a remark most certainly at my expense, it just confirmed that I couldn't handle being there. I had become to weird, too irrevocably fucked up and from a strange family to ever fit in. I couldn't even begin to imagine making it to class on the first day, much less making friends. Having a family that moved every year or two of my life made me paralyzed with fear upon entering a new school, knowing I would be an object of curiosity and ridicule as I had to find a lunch table to sit at. I couldn't do it. I never ended up attending Red Hook Highschool. I would end up in their year books "Chose Not to Pose" section that year, but I stayed home within the confines of our family's one-room apartment or would wander the grounds of the Unification Theological Seminary.

It's been more than ten years since then, but I still feel as though I live in a crisis-fueled gypsy whirlwind. Before I fling myself across the country to New Mexico, I ask myself; how long I will stay there? Where will I go after that? Will I ever feel stable enough to settle down and place down roots?

And can I ever look at a piece of cheesecake in an untainted way?

Rev. Moon: American women have inherited the lineage of prostitutes.

2012-11-09T16:00:00.001-08:00

So in preparing to go through the next few chapters of this story, I've been doing a lot of exploring of the emotional terrain that these vignettes encompass. There is still a lot of pain, fear and shame associated with these memories. I've been asking myself "why" a lot: why am I so ashamed of something that I had so little control over? Why am I ashamed of how I survived?

In some ways I am overcoming the shame as I examine the memories, but it's still a bit of a ripping sensation to get them out of my heart and onto proverbial paper. It's a damn shame that our teenaged years were lost to these negative experiences, and the self-loathing that they induced. And there are a lot of things that I blame my parents for. But hot damn, then I read a little bit more about the actual structure of the world that I grew up in, and then I begin to seethe a bit.

The source of the shame is based in the culture and the theology. No one had to go through what my siblings and I went through to feel that same sour shame coating every single sensation of theirs.

For example, let's take this 1996 speech by Rev. Moon given in Tarrytown, Ny. He says "American women have inherited the lineage of prostitutes." If you read the speech, which is relatively incomprehensible, that line comes out of the fucking blue. The student in me screams "site your goddamn sources! Where in the world does it say that American women are descended from prostitutes? Where do you come up with a line like that??"

Here's a little more lovely context:

"Are you tempted by handsome men and beautiful women who pay attention to you? (No.) Actually, all manner of thoughts come and go through your minds. Father's conclusion is that many American women have inherited the lineage of prostitutes. But you don't feel badly about it. American women feel superior to and scorn prostitutes, but in reality these prostitutes are earning money, this is their job. However, American women are even worse because they practice free sex just because they enjoy it."

And yet people absolutely swallowed that.

I didn't attend that speech. I was 12. I was growing up in a culture governed by a man who arbitrarily decided that American women were worse than prostitutes.

That explains a lot...I'm beginning to understand the origins of the shame.

"Ticket to Heaven"

2012-11-02T16:00:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been doing a lot of reading and processing. We're getting to the point in this particular story that's really difficult to emotionally unearth.

In the process of getting to that storytelling juncture, I've been thinking a lot about my parents and their journey into the Unification Church. In my reading, I came across the 1981 Canadian Film "Ticket to Heaven." There is this little voice in the back of my head, saying that someone told me about this film growing up, defaming it and saying how grossly inaccurate it was.

I just finished watching it...the deprogramming scenes are a bit heart-wrenching for me. As I mentioned in a previous post, deprogramming is a really complicated topic and involves violating someone's free will and rights. BUT we could also discuss how many religious cults slowly hypnotize people into giving up their free will and surrendering their logical minds.

The scene where they talk about unselfish love was really painful, but it was also wonderful in a way. For the most part my relatives respected my parents' choice to raise their children in the Unification Church, but there are times that I look back and wish that someone had taken the time to ask us kids some of the more subversive questions (or to show us what unselfish, non-conditional love was).

Anyway I'd say about 90% of what I saw in this film rang true in terms of my own experience growing up in the church. Some things were more austere, some less. A lot of the worship and workshop scenes, singing in buses and living in vans were very familiar.

The wrist cutting was almost something we were quietly taught as second generation when we were fundraising, but never in so explicit a format - so I have no idea if that was something that our parents were taught. We were told it was better to kill yourself than to be raped while fundraising, for example, and so some parents did give their daughters "purity knives" to keep on their person while fundraising. And THAT is a whole other story...

So, most this is probably right on the money for someone who met the church in the 70's or 80's. Take a look (Kim Cattrall is in it!):

And here is the NY Times article written about the film:

http://www.nytimes.com/1981/11/13/movies/ticket-to-heaven-a-sleeper-about-cults.html

Falling Updated 8/19/2015

2012-10-29T13:28:00.003-07:00

** This post has been updated on 8/19/2015, and has been edited from it's 10/29/2012 post to reflect the version published in the 3rd issue of SANDY THE ZINE, "SLUT" back in September 2014. Reprinted with permission**

As a female child, I was already being slut-shamed before I was conceived. We've all heard about how Eve made poor life choices, dragging the highest form of creation (Adam/man) into her fruit-eating sinful lifestyle. Upping the shame-game, members of the Unification Church believe the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was metaphorical. That the actual fall of man was when Eve was seduced by Lucifer the archangel (in studly-man form, not snake), thus leading her to seduce Adam and destroy the platonic innocence between them.

Reverend Moon wasn't very fond of women and he especially didn't like American women. They were the opposite of the dutiful and pious Korean women, who were now apart of the new chosen people. In a 1996 speech, he declared that American women had inherited the lineage of prostitutes, because they enjoyed having sex for pleasure - instead of regarding it as a wifely and duty to God. Many of the first generation of men to join Reverend Moon's church in the 1970's, my dad included, hoped to be matched to an Asian woman. To be matched to an American woman was to link arms with someone of a lower spiritual cast.

Being a 2nd generation girl raised in this belief meant that we had to limit our contact with male peers (or "brothers".) We were expected to avoid any type of physical, romantic, or sexual relationship with a male until we were matched and married. Losing one's virginity before marriage was the worst sin imaginable, probably ranked above murder and drug use in the eyes of the Unification Church. Adam and Eve were banished to the darkest pits of hell for committing such a sin. Inspired by the "Purity Knife" tradition of Korean noblewomen, girls in our church community were encouraged to kill themselves if they encountered a compromising situation which could result in being sexually assaulted. Death would have been considered a blessing. As a female, my only value was my sexual purity. Women in the church held so little power that their husbands made all of their decisions for them, from getting your ears pierced to access to a college education.

I lost my virginity right before I turned seventeen. I had been enduring a crisis of faith since I was fourteen. As I began to question everything about the way I was raised, I also began dating a boy from my middle school. I continued dating and exploring my developing sexuality into high school.
Even if one were to remove the threat of irrevocable spiritual damnation, losing my virginity was still a miserable experience. My boyfriend at the time was a complete creep who pressured me into having sex when I was still of a kissing/hand-holding mindset. Afterwards, I sat on his bed and sobbed. He dropped me at home. My big sister was very confused when I entered our room practically in hysterics, and I eventually confessed to my parents via email. They reacted with silence. They could not believe something this horrible could have happened to one of the perfect children Reverend Moon had promised them.

My sister was traveling across New York State to Buffalo and nanny for a church family that lived there. I accompanied her, hoping to simultaneously escape my parent's disappointment and my own shame. I fluctuated between crying on the bed we shared, and trying to distract myself by helping with the babysitting. I spent the solitary moments venting to my sister. I thought if I could just keep talking at her, some lifeline would remain to save me from impending insanity and being ripped away to hell by forces from the spirit world. I returned home on a Holy Day called "God's Day". AS I stood next to my mother, bowing to a photograph of Reverend Moon and his wife, I sobbed, feeling like the world's biggest failure. My mother told me that in hell, Hitler is tied to a post and all the people he killed during the war tear him apart again and again, in an endless torture. I imagined something similar awaited me upon my death for giving away my "most precious" gift.

Everything began to fall apart. An opinionated church member who ran a "boarding school" in Texas (which I once had the misfortune of visiting friends there,) had informed all my peers of my sinful mistake. Now everyone in the church community was gossiping and knew I was tainted. Not only was I my parent's shame, but I was now the shame of all the friends I had made in the Unification Church. I emailed one of my closest friends to explain the story from my perspective, but after weeks of no response I finally received a curt email stating that I was dead to her and that she was no longer allowed to contact me. In the few church events that I attended I received sidelong glances from my peers and their parents. I was the girl who had "done it". I was the girl who had "fallen" from grace.

A few years ago, I retold this story to my therapist, sharing the emotional anguish that I had endured when I thought that I had done irreparable damage to both my soul and God's heart by sleeping with a boy. I explained the nightmares and panic attacks that felt like Satan had me by the throat. When I finished, my therapist leaned back in his chair with his hand over his mouth. Processing, we sat in silence for a while. Finally, when he spoke; "I want you to understand that what you're coping with is trauma."

I can't help but be angry when I slowly open the door and peek at those damaging memories lurking in the dark. Even as a now-atheist, I struggle to remind myself I do have value and purpose in the world outside of my parent's religion. I have worked so hard to normalize myself. I put myself through college, I got my ears pierced, I learned how to swing dance, I taught myself to cook, to paint, to meditate. I toughed my way through two very competitive internships at The Juilliard School and The Santa Fe Opera. Now, I'm a career makeup artist in NYC who works in film, TV, and Broadway. I have an attentive boyfriend who supports me through all my weird hang-ups and baggage with love, patience, and understanding.

Up until recently, my mom would periodically email me with information about upcoming "forgiveness ceremonies", which the Unification Church held for those who have 'fallen' (i.e. had sex with someone who they weren't married to.) For a hefty sum, I could be elevated from my lowly status in the church to somewhere near the 1st generation status of my parents. I would not be allowed to marry someone from my former second generation peers. Clearly, I was still tainted goods to my mother.

But I am not ashamed of who I've become and how I have gotten here.

TED Talk: Diane Benscoter on the Unification Church

2012-10-26T15:06:00.000-07:00

Taking a moment to step out of the story to say: I really love TED talks. I saw the one given by Diane Benscoter on the Unification Church back in 2009, but I only just read the follow up Q&A with her on the TED Blog thanks to a post on How Well Do You Know Your Moon. I really recommend the talk and the Q&A, but I have to make some qualifying statements first.

After leaving the church, Benscoter became a deprogrammer. Deprogramming is a highly controversial practice; growing up we heard about deprogrammers like they were the boogiemen. One of my teachers at New Eden Academy told us that he had been kidnapped by a deprogrammer and tied to a bed in a hotel room. The story may or may not be embellished, and included a heroic escape out of a window, but it was something that stuck with me.

If you want to try comparing apples and oranges, deprogramming is sort of the reverse side of indoctrination - it seeks to break the mind of its self-inflicted illogic loop. I use the word break because I think can be very dangerous to a person's psychology. It takes a long time, a lot of mental and emotional work at self-actualization, and then a strong self belief and personal resolve to end that constriction. No one can and should do it for you (and on the obverse side, no one should inflict the initiation of an illogic-loop, but that's a Whole Other Post.)

While Benscoter is no longer involved in deprogramming, she gives an interesting perspective on the "why" of it. I also think that it's fascinating that she refers to deprogramming as an "underground railroad, of sorts." I struggle with that term because, yes deprogramming was a conduit out, and hot damn do I wish that there was a modern-day Harriet Tubman that I could have called on back in the day. But what if someone had grabbed the 17-year old me off of the streets and tried to open up my brain and untangle it before I was ready to do that for myself? I cannot imagine.

In her talk she shows a slideshow; one picture is of Unification Church members and the other one is of Hitler Youth. Frankly it hurts to have your background compared to that of Hitler Youth, suicide bombers, and the participants of the Jonestown Massacre. There is something that doesn't sit well in the pit of your stomach when you hear your parents and childhood friends categorized like that. But the point that Benscoter is making is about how these types of groups inflict circular logic and how it fundamentally rewires the brain.

The question it brings up to me then is, what if Rev. Moon had told his followers to become armed insurrectionists. What if he had told people that on "Foundation Day" the "Cheon Il Gook" could only be achieved by ascending to another plane, so please drink the ~~kool-aid~~ Holy Wine. These are questions that any Unificationist would become incensed by, and I understand that. BUT the fundamental driving point that Benscoter is trying to make is that the brain is hardwired to begin to accept strong suggestion in that direction.

And then there's the Upstart Buisness Journal's article on Kook Jin Moon's firearm company, Kahr Arms, and Koon Jin's quote: "Religion’s whole thing is ‘Don’t hurt others; we want peace.’ But most religions understand that there are people who don’t want peace.” Yes, it's taken out of context, but it's still a little unnerving.

Anyway overall, the TED talk is good (although I wish it went into more depth). I recommend it, as well as the Q&A Blog, for an interesting perspective:

Learning to hide between the mirror and the wall

2012-10-23T15:30:00.000-07:00

Flying over the Atlantic to Europe for the second half of the tour felt like physically disconnecting from my life and my problems. There was an entire ocean between my parents’ choices and me – the physical space also gave me the mental breathing room to think about who I was outside of the context of my mother’s accusations of my father. Maybe I wasn’t doomed to be a social pariah, deemed untouchable by my community. Maybe…

For the first time that summer on tour I was able to enjoy the company of others and keep my depression at bay. The sights and sounds of London elated me; waking up in Paris was a dream. I never wanted to go home. Then I reminded myself: I didn’t really have a home.

The two weeks passed by in a rush and as my departure date grew closer I began to asphyxiate on anxiety. My breathing would come in shallow gasps and my vision would sometimes blur as I thought about the great unknown of my future waiting back in the States. All too soon I touched down at JFK.

I have no memory of arriving at New Eden. It was likely late at night and I was sleep-deprived and jetlagged. Upon arriving in my mom’s apartment I passed out on a mattress on the floor. My sister watched over me as a slept, almost as a sentinel to guard me against the nature of the reality I had just entered. I must have slept fitfully, dreaming of nighttime beasts and glowing eyes. “Did you see The Midnight Carnival?” I asked her, sitting up but half dreaming. She giggled and helped me back to sleep.

After the hangover of grogginess passed, I awoke to a world of seemingly-endless cinderblock hallways. Walls were painted with marine-grade paint, as though each year the sins had to be pressure washed away. My sister told me about the urine smells, the fly infestation and the nighttime cleaning vigils. I fed her European chocolate that I had brought home, hoping to help ease the pain.

Our first weeks at New Eden were solitary ones. There were only a few live-in staff members on the premises. While exploring my new horizons I met a former staff member who was moving out. He warned me of evil lurking in the halls. I raised an eyebrow at his superstitions. Long ago I had learned to suspect many First Gen and their grip on reality.

He saw my dubious expression and narrowed his eyes. “There is a dark spirit that hovers around here, like a cloud. When it descends like a storm, you’ll know.” He glanced up at the dorm buildings and gave a near-imperceptible shudder, as though he feared invoking the evil of which he spoke.

And the darkness did descend.

Students arrived and school began. The first few weeks were relatively peaceful and I used them as an opportunity to try to recover from the trauma of the previous summer. We had morning service each day, and I would arrive early to spend a few solitary moments in reflections. Service took place in the same basement where most of our classes were held. Though the place smelled as though a rot had firmly taken hold I would sit, cross-legged and barefoot, waiting for everyone else to arrive and trying to concentrate on my breathing.

Many times I could only get small gasps. My lungs ached for more air but could never seem to pull in enough before my throat would constrict. During the morning services I would search for words to hang onto – words that could be the calm in my storm or that could offer me a sense of peace. Despite my search, despite my internal pleas to God, I didn’t find those words.

After The Most Horrible Day, where I learned that there were no true allies to be found and no safe harbor of friendship, I stopped attending morning services. Instead I hid in my room. There was a small crawl space in my dorm closet, behind a built-in vanity mirror, that I learned I could fit myself into. Many mornings I would curl into that space and trycommune with the silence.

After the headmaster counted who was missing from morning service, the dorm mom would search our rooms. I would hear the knock on the door, and an inquiring voice from the other side. She would try the door and find it locked. Then there was the jingle of keys and the distinctive click as the master key allowed her entry into my sanctuary. She would look under my bed, in the closet and anywhere else she thought that a teenager could hide.

She never knew about that tiny space between the mirror and the wall. Nestled next to the cinderblock, it never occurred to me to consider the physical contortions that I put myself into in order to hide from these people. But hide I did. And there, with my nose nestled between my knees, I continued working on my breathing.

In and Out.

Each day became a survival game and every student found a way to rebel against the bondage of obedience that was prized over learning. I slept in the back of my American History class every morning, learning how to move my hand in a mimic of note-taking while dozing. I learned that my Oceanography teacher hated anything against dress code, so I wore Birkenstocks to class every day and flaunted my blue toenails, only to be dismissed from class regularly for my defiance.

Even with the bravado of defiance, many of us didn’t know how to protect ourselves from the insulated lifestyle of the school. Our schedules were regimented as though we were serving a sentence as opposed to seeking an education. Faculty members were suspicious of our every move, our every conversation and any kind of opposite-gender interaction. In true trickle-down form, that suspicion and pathos seeped down into the student body.

Instead of the school being a New Eden, it was a hotbed for our own dysfunctions to grow. Though the school was advertised as a haven for parents to send their children into, where the ideals of purity and heavenly-mindedness were upheld, most students struggled with one form of self-abuse or another. Sex, drugs, alcohol and food were all indulged in excessively. Everyone knew not to use the dorm restrooms in the morning, as they would usually reek of the night’s aftermath.

My depression often prevented me from being able to eat. I was never popular enough to be included in the drinking and the using, nor did anyone ever express sexual interest in me. If they had, I was too mentally wound up in a melodramatic emotional affair with “S” to notice. Instead, my excess was turned inward. Through that inward turn the darkness truly descended.

It was shortly after our 9pm curfew. There was screaming down the hall; someone’s fists were pounded in rhythmic slams against a door. The slams weren’t requests for entry; they were just another desperate prisoner’s pleas for release. Somehow the noise complimented the bass line of the Reggaeton that reverberated against the cinderblock walls.

I sat in the dark of my room, with only candles for light. My back was against the locked door and I had given up on breathing that night. I drew my air in ragged gasps through gritted teeth as I gazed down at the knife in in my hand.

Little rivulets of blood sprang up under the blade as I dragged it across my wrist. It was too dull to do any real damage. It was meant for sharpening my drawing pencils, but it did enough. Horrified and mesmerized, I continued digging as I found deeper relief with each slice.

That night an addiction was born and for years afterwards I turned to it for relief. I never dug deep enough to cause visible scars; breaking the skin and seeing blood was all I needed. Long sleeves and fingerless gloves covered the outward manifestation of my sickness, but I would still stare greedily at sharp objects when I felt the need to cut or keep stashes of safety pins and bottle caps around, just in case. Inside I admired other people’s cuts, accidental though they usually were – in my mind I would equate a form of relief with the physical injury.
My only takeaways from that year at New Eden were a barely-achieved degree, suspicion of every church member that I met, and an addiction to self-injury.

It took me years to stop cutting, and then many years after that of fighting the urge. But a moment finally came where I knew that I had to stop. I had been good during most of my first semester away at college, but returning home for winter break to the toxic environment of my parents sent me into a panicked downward spiral. I found a plastic bottle cap and dug incessantly into my wrist. By the time I was done, my arm looked mangled. I returned to school with a bandage and a brace on my wrist, hoping I could pass it off as an accidental injury.

“What the hell happened?” My college roommate asked when she saw.

“I fell. On some ice,” I lied.

We looked at each other for a long time. She searched my eyes and seemed hurt by what she saw. Her shoulders fell in resignation and without another word she turned and left the room.

She had been my first friend when I had come to college. She had helped me get a job at the college paper; she’d given me a copy of The Vagina Monologues to help me reframe my ideology of womanhood. She had shared with me that she was struggling with an eating disorder. I finally realized that my addiction was keeping me from being truthful, on so many levels, and that I would never be able to connect with another person until I stopped hurting myself.

I wish that I had been brave enough back then to seek help, but in the church we were discouraged from seeking “outside help.” Oftentimes denial of a problem was deemed a reasonable enough solution. If that didn’t work, then shaming a sufferer into silence often did.Today, I hope that the young people in the church who are suffering from self-inflicted scars can find it in themselves to seek help. I hope that, with everything going on in the church right now and the institution crumbling from within, people can find it in their hearts to accept each other and not continue to shun and shame. And to any fellow sufferer: please, please, please do not feel ashamed for seeking help. It is the bravest thing that you can do.

Even in the darkest moments of our lives, there is love and acceptance in the Universe. You are beautiful, you are loved and you deserve to be healthy. Tell yourself that every day and eventually the pain will not be able to sustain its grip. One day you will wake up, and you will remember how to breathe.

Life without Rev. Moon

2012-10-22T15:14:00.004-07:00

I'm really really honored that Jane and Edith over at The Hairpin agreed to publish an essay of mine. A thousand times "Thank you!"

The story in that essay is sort of a bookend to what we are beginning over here. Thanks to everyone that's joining us for the ride. <3

--

Thirty-thousand feet seems like a good altitude at which to question one's life. “I am already in motion,” I tell myself. It's a kind of progress. Shortly after my twentieth birthday I was in progress, between JFK and Heathrow, en route to Oslo.

After takeoff the girl sitting next to me smiled kindly, asking where I was headed. I told her:

“To Norway. To visit my husband.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a stack of glossy women's magazines, offering me several. They promised hot sex tips, orgasm-inducing positions, and advice on how to find a man to orgasm with. She pointed to a few with a wink. “Maybe you can find something nice in there for your husband.”

Today, almost a decade later, to use the word husband feels wrong; I avoid it. But at the time it was what he said I should call him. “I am your husband!” he would say. The word sounded foreign in my ears; "husband" was supposed to be a word attached to “honoring” and “cherishing,” and whatever else heartfelt marriage vows should entail.

But I had not been given the choice to say those vows.

Read the rest of the essay on The Hairpin:
http://thehairpin.com/2012/10/life-without-reverend-moon

The Chicago Outro

2012-10-16T16:10:00.000-07:00

To return to that dismal Chicago morning, I was completing my slow return back to the center, with the newspaper that I had been achingly desperate to attain. Now, a normal 15 year old ought to have been able to execute the task with relatively little to no emotional harm. I, on the other hand, returned emotionally haggard. Something about that small, slow journey had unravelled the last thread of my composure.

When I found the simpering leader back at the center, he accepted the paper without a glance and with a haphazard "thank you." No further direction was issued and I was utterly without purpose. So I returned to my room until I was summoned to begin the work that I had been attained for.

That morning I was the sole occupant of a large room, crowded with half a dozen bunk beds. There were few signs of live-in occupants, but the house itself seemed to go on forever. Despite a crushing loneliness, I was grateful to be alone. The tears that had been leaking out of my eyes on my newspaper sojourn couldn't take the bottleneck anymore and I took full advantage of my solitude to indulge in weeping.

It was the kind of gut-wrenching, snot-dripping cry I'm rarely capable of. It terrifies me, because it overwhelms. The tears that had begun as small rivulets down my face came with more insistence and it became a struggle to breathe, as though my soul was trying to vomit out the memories and horrors that had unfolded in our lives during the past six months.

My sister and I, though we had turned the events over in in conversation a hundred times, had kept a brave face to each other. We knew that we were a team; we hid things from each other like our boyfriends and our doubts. But we had presented a united front of strength and solicitude to our brothers, and a defiant resistance to the persistent insanity of our parents. I missed her with an ache, like a missing limb; I felt selfish for being removed from the situation and not being there to help her protect the tiny corner of sanity we had been able to salvage.

My sobs became retching and underneath the sorrow I was surprised that I hadn't actually vomited up my breakfast. After two hours of carrying on this way, an older first generation found me huddled up in the corner. She crouched down next to me, put her hand carefully on my shoulder and said, "Jenny, here I will be your mother figure. I can see you are unhappy. Please tell me what's wrong."

The words tumbled out of my mouth. My parents were separating; I was devastated and scared, was my hiccuping G-rated confession. The media relations director joined us shortly there after, and with slightly-less maternal care declared that it was probably better if I stayed with the group. "We'll pull you out for interviews," she lied.

To untangle me from my funk, they put me to work on the fax machine for the duration of the day. The newspaper-requiring leader gave me a perfunctory handshake and a platitude laced with "guess you weren't the candidate we were looking for" before I was driven back to the church where the rest of the group had been sleeping.

No one actually addressed the issues that I had brought up. I was expected to simply wipe my face and go back to the group and rally around the message we had been spoon-fed. I was asked to give one of the opening speeches for our first rally; it was to be written around a number of talking points that we were to memorize. In my diary I wrote about feeling oddly disconnected from everyone and from reality. "I know I'm not the girl who goes up and gives speeches and believes in abstinence to the deepest core of my soul. That's the fake me I try to make others see. I feel like who I really am is way too depressing for anyone to ever like. Even I don't like myself."

After two weeks we ended up in Barrytown, NY for a few nights before flying to Europe for another two weeks of rallies calling for Pure Love, Pure Life - One Man, One Wife. Before making the transatlantic flight, I called my grandparents back in Arizona to ask where my family was and to find out where I was coming home to. My grandfather, with a sigh of resignation, said that my mother had taken my siblings to a church school in Bridgeport, CT where she was going to be a dorm mom.

New Eden Academy was going to be my new home.

There was one girl on the tour that I had shared my story with. Incidentally, she attended New Eden and, after my conversation with my grandfather, I informed her that she was going to be my new schoolmate.

"My mom is going to be the new dorm mother for the boys," I said.

"Oh My God," she shouted. "Your mom's going to commit suicide!"

How do we measure?

2012-10-15T13:32:00.003-07:00

Sometimes life feels like a game of catch-up; and I'm not talking about trying to jump on the hamster wheel of the dreaded rat race. But figuring out this whole 'life' thing, especially as a self-directed endeavor, sometimes feels overwhelming.

It's probably safe to say that the majority of us feel like we've got only an inkling of a clue as to what's going on. There are times where I take comfort in that. Other times, like today, I struggle to shake the free-floating anxiety I attach to the bigger questions of "Where am I going" and "What do I want." There were times where I thought that I knew; mostly I know that I don't know.

And you know what? A grand majority of the time I am just fine with that. I try to give myself a lot of leeway, like: "Hey, for a gal who grew up in a cult that controlled all of the aspects of your life, you're doing kind of well for yourself." Sometimes, though, that just doesn't feel like enough. While I realize that I'm fighting the programming of how I was raised, it's very difficult to shake the feeling of not being enough. This is only exacerbated by the success/fame obsession we have in our culture.

There was a time, about 10 years ago, that I ached to be fucking normal (whatever that means, right?).
There is this distinct memory of being 17 and life guarding on gloomy winter mornings, listening to the sploosh, sploosh, splursh of the elderly patrons' laps across the pool. I had learned all of their strokes patterns and knew that, despite appearances, the gentleman in lane three was not drowning. He just sort of swam that way. I would get mesmerized by their gliding across the pool, my head going back and forth like a mother hen counting her chicks.

I'd walk around the pool to stay awake, being the only guard on duty those cold mornings. During the hours of solitary watching, I'd wrestle with my internal self and the rhetoric that we had been indoctrinated with: we had to be someone for God and "True Father." We had to accomplish things for God and "True Parents." One older sister had once taken me out to lunch specifically to tell me that she thought I had a lot to offer God. But I had no idea what it was I was supposed to do, or be or accomplish and that anxiety of not knowing often drove me to distraction.

There was a point in those early mornings where I simply longed for normalcy, and to live my life for myself. I didn't really want to work for God, love for God, or accomplish for God. Rebellious! The God of my childhood bore Rev. Moon's face. There was disapproval lining every expression. There was nothing that I wanted to give to that; to feed into that was to be faced with every offering of self as being insufficient.

I sought normal, safe and insignificant as my shelter from the world of upheaval and abuse. It was probably the foundation that I needed. Success was measured in teaspoons: being able to buy a car, pay rent on an apartment, hold down a job, have a cat....have a relationship. Later I worked myself through school and got a big girl job. Had we graduated to tablespoons of success?

It's still difficult for me to measure my success as a human being. A number of my fellow second generation who left the church are dealing with sex and drug addiction. There are others that are immensely successful in their professional lives - a success that I hope translates into their personal lives as well. It's taking me time to discover what makes me a worthwhile human being. Outside of the context of being dictated to, and told where my worth and value lies, it is difficult to get my bearings some days.

For a long time it has been difficult to deal with the knowledge that no matter what I accomplished in my life, I would never have true acknowledgement or approval from my parents. All they really wanted from me was to get married (for God) and make babies (for God). Everything else would have been icing on the proverbial cake (for God).

Maybe, just maybe, I am finally coming to terms with that. It's ok to go through life without the stamp of approval from authority figures. I'm also learning that, despite the way I was raised, I can pick and choose my mentors and, occasionally, my authority figures. There is no one else to answer to in my life but me. That can be fucking lonely...

Now that I'm finally crawling out of my hiding place of insignificance and anonymity, I ask myself how do I measure myself as a person. Am I a success? Just because I didn't become addicted to sex or drugs upon leaving the church, does that in any way reflect on my worth? I don't think so - but truthfully it was a point of measure for me for a long time- especially if I had to defend myself against my parents.

There is a birthday coming up. I'm nearing the end of my 20's and many days I still feel lost. Is that normal?

"I have come to accept the feeling of not knowing where I am going. And I have trained myself to love it. Because it is only when we are suspended in mid-air with no landing in sight, that we force our wings to unravel and alas begin our flight. And as we fly, we still may not know where we are going to. But the miracle is in the unfolding of the wings. You may not know where you're going, but you know that so long as you spread your wings, the winds will carry you."

~C. JoyBell C.

Ascending Moon

2012-10-09T06:54:00.002-07:00

Across from my restaurant job was a Duane Reade, during break I walked across the street and spent the last $3 of my EBT funds to buy a microwavable Progresso soup that I ended up just drinking straight out of the container. Outside, I propped myself against a concrete planter, disregarding the fact that very spot probably had been christened with dog piss over the years. I settled down and stared at my phone again. I hadn't spoken to my mother in months, but she had texted me while I was at work to inform me Reverend Sun Myung Moon had passed away.

I kept staring at the phone screen waiting to feel something. As a child, I had imagined that the world would dramatically change when 'True Father' passed away. As if buildings would crumble and the Earth would shake, but it didn't. He was just a man, and he had no power over me anymore.

At least, that's what I kept telling myself. I wanted to not owe him anything, but the truth is that if he hadn't flicked his hand in the general direction of my mother and father during the matching process, my siblings and I would have never existed. It didn't matter how much thought he had put into the match (probably none at all,) but it was at his discretion that I came to be in this world. And for that, I hated him.

My mother used to exalt us with how we were amazing miracles, children born of a pure blood lineage and that we were each unique, extraordinary beings, destined for great things.

My teen years were a testament to how un-extraordinary I was, as outside the church-world I felt I had no value. Outsiders didn't praise and recognize how 'phenomenal' of a being I was, because I knew nothing about the world outside the church-bubble and expression of personal ambitions, talent, and perspective was all very much discouraged, especially for girls. The longer I questioned the validity of every truth and value I was raised with, the more I realized I had a disadvantage in comparison with everyone else in the world. I would have to break free from everything I knew and learn how the world really functioned, starting all over at sixteen. I would have to relearn how to socialize with people, how to drive, how to do my taxes, and ultimately how to value myself outside the defining variables of the Unification Church (it's become an ongoing process.)

For years I blamed Reverend Moon for everything I've ever been through. I blamed him for the verbal, mental, and physical abuse my father lashed out at us. I blamed him for having two financially ignorant parents who couldn't hold down a job or a place to live for more than two years. I blamed him for the unstable toxic environment which we were raised, waking up and going to sleep to the sounds of my parents screaming at each other, or the nights when it was my turn to rock one of my baby brothers back to sleep since my mother's depression kept her bed-bound. I hated him for the horrific summer we spent moving from Arizona to Bridgeport, Connecticut, and having to deal with the tension of my mother trying to accuse my father of sexually molesting us by slipping a note into his briefcase.
I hated Reverend Moon for the year I spent among his 'blessed children', dealing with alienation and ridicule from peers at New Eden Academy. I hated him for the summer we spent being homeless, living mostly out of the navy Mercury Villager mini-van our Grandfather bought us, crashing with my mother's friends in Yonkers, or motel hopping in the Hudson Valley. I hate him for how church members scorned us when we arrived in Barrytown, looking for help from the community, only to be treated like lepers for having a broken family. I hated him for the years I spent destroying myself inside for losing my virginity at sixteen (a.k.a. falling in Moonie-speak,) only to learn that attraction to boys and having sex as a teenager is a completely normal thing. I blamed him for turning out so fucked up that at 26 I'm taking baby steps to take control of my life, and to come to grips with clinical depression that has had me by the throat since fourteen.

I hated him for being born. It was by the point of his fingertips that I came into being, and had to deal with every hardship in my life. If he had just picked another husband or wife for my parents, I would still be matter and energy out in the universe, free of responsibility and life.

An acquaintance of mine from Moonie summer camp posted on her Facebook the day Reverend Moon died; "You were a beautiful soul. RIP."
I wanted to flip a table.
Later when she clarified what she meant, she expressed that while she was no longer a member of the Unification Church, she had to credit Reverend Moon for all the crazy good things that happened in her life and for that she was grateful. Clearly, everyone has a different experience.

Eventually my half hour break was over, and I picked myself up off the concrete and headed back to my job. He had 'ascended' but I remain, steering the wheel my life. I can't blame him for where I go from here.

"He shot me down"

2012-10-08T16:27:00.002-07:00

Bang bang

This blog has been a part of a personal manifesto to be more truthful about ourselves. To express who we are, and where we have come from. On my part, this is a process of parsing things out in order to look at them analytically: "Ah, I see how this works."

Intrinsic to this manifesto is the breaking down of walls that held our compartmentalized selves for so long. It's about being vulnerable and saying, "this is who I am and where I have been. Now I can work on proceeding." For me, personally, the entire process in my life is like standing naked and trying to unlearn shame in front of an audience. And if I am going for being completely authentic, there are times where that has really sucked.

I hit the ground.

Reeling from a bit of rejection-by-association, as well as some of the personal blockades I've been met with, I'm wondering a bit about this idea of baggage and how it defines us (or how others choose to define us by it). Frankly, none of us has the tools to deal with this big thing called Life.

Life should be something to look at with wide-eyed wonder; we are children in the Universe. But that can be a bit starry-eyed. After all...there are such things as serial killers and genocide and world war. None of us were given a handbook when we arrived on this little planet (at least I wasn't. Were you????). For the most part, I think a lot of us are doing the best that we can to Do No Harm.

Yet lately in this search for healing and authenticity, we've both been faced with reactions that boldly ask us "Why are you even dealing with that?" or "How come you are still carrying that around?"

That awful sound.

In a process of healing, that is debilitating. As is rejection based on perceived baggage and its weight.

A gentle reminder: we haven't asked you to carry it.

No one wants to be defined by a disability. By the same token, no one wants to be defined by the things they are trying to heal from. There is so much more than meets the eye. Who knows...you might be pleasantly surprised if you take the time to look.

My baby shot me down.

Letters from Hell

2012-10-07T21:44:00.002-07:00

Dear Lani,

I read your last post and couldn't sleep. I felt an incredible need to address the moment that you wrote about. Not to refute it in anyway, but it brought up the memory of that night very strongly and I couldn't let it go.
So I dug up my old diary from when I was 15. Frankly that moment in time is still too painful for me to address as an adult; therefore I will let my teenaged self do it for me (names have been...modified, but I think you'll know who is who):

Sat Oct 28th '00

I want to leave! I dont think I can bear to stay here anymore! Last night was the breaking point for me. And I feel like I've been broken into too many pieces to put back together right now.

Yesterday Mom drove NH, MJ, KLee, Lani and me to the mall. MJ wanted to shop for stuff for herself and Lani and NH went with her. KLee and I went off by ourselves. We all met back at the food court, ate dinner, then left the mall around 7. While on the bus, KLee was upset because she didn't find what she had come for.
The bus stopped to pick up people, and she saw a Stop & Shop Pharmacy. I offered to go with her to look in there. So we got off while the other three went back to NEA. We walked about 2 miles and went to about four different places looking for her wax strips. Finally we found a CVS around 8:30. They had what she was looking for and she was really happy. We bought them and then we out to the bus stop and waited...and waited.
While we were waiting these two guys in a black suburban pulled up at the stop light and started shouting for us to get in the back of the car. Then the light turned green and they started turning. We were afraid they were coming back to get us, so we jumped behind the porch of a nearby house and hid till we were sure they weren't coming back. Around 8:45 we called NEA and told them we would be back late. We got home a little before 10.
The first thing I did was go take a shower. While I was in the shower I heard KLee trying to tell HJ and AG what had happened. They were just making fun of her and telling her she was 'full of shit.'
After I had come in and seen LRN's new haircut. I was trying to compliment her and HW and TF for cutting it, but everyone seemed to be ignoring me. I kept hearing a door slam and then someone pounding the door. I figured it was HJ because she's done that before - but only when she's angry. I wondered why she was angry now.
Later KLee was in my room waxing while I was sewing my costume. Then NH and YM came in and said that every single girl in the dorm was mad at us, especially me. I was like "Why the hell are they mad at me?"
Someone called a girl's meeting. There in the hallway I saw HJ and asked her what the hell was going on. She said something like "You tell me. You MoFos have a lot of explaining to do!" Then she said we should go into the lounge because there would be more room for "ass kicking." Everyone sat own on the couches or floor around me and only HJ and I were standing.
She stood, facing me, but behind a couch. She began screaming at me that I was a fake bitch who was talking shit about everyone. Every other word was fuck. I found myself shaking, trying to defend myself, cussing just as much as her. Eventually everyone was trying to out scream each other.
Finally YM calmed things down and HJ stopped screaming. They were trying to get me to confess to saying things that I hadn't, and blaming me for every single rumor and thing the faculty had found out. They kept verbally attacking me and finally I thought that by apologizing, everything would stop. I apologized for everything I HAD said and for everything that they thought I had said. Then I asked them to help me change.
I thought that would have been enough. But no. They proceeded to attack me, Lani, and even NH for the next half an hour. During that time RF ran out crying, NH and TF almost got into a physical fight, and HJ told me that my mom had been telling her about the 'problems I had.' Finally Lani got fed up, started crying again and left. I could see that the meeting was going nowhere, so I went to follow Lani. As I left, I heard NF say, "Where are they going? Why the hell do they think they can leave?"As if she wasn't satisfied yet and wanted to dish out more.
I found Lani in the stairwell, crying. I sat down next to her, held her, and cried with her. We both wanted to die. We hated everyone and everything. We just sobbed for 20 minutes until YM came in to try to talk to us. She was trying to be nice and sympathetic, but I really didn't want to talk to her. I told her that I thought what they had just done was really unfair. Any girl could have been put up there and accused of the same things, if not more so. Worse, I said, they were blaming me for things I didn't say and do.
Then she told me that "rumors were flying" about me and RJ [Note: Male. Class President. Easily the Most Attractive/Popular boy in school.] and that if I had stayed at the meeting, they would have confronted me about it. I got so mad because I know there is nothing between me and RJ coming from my part. Also I knew NH must have started the rumor out of jealousy. After that I knew I could never trust her, or anyone else at NEA, again. Finally I ended the conversation because I wanted to go upstairs to mom's apt. (The main reason was that I wanted to write an email to "S," but I also wanted to tell mom what had happened.)
At that point it was about 1am and we had to wake mom up by knocking on her locked door. We cried and told her what happened. She got really upset and said that the girls were being lying hypocrites. She ened up blaming the whole thing on herself.
Tomorrow is our Halloween Party. I really don't want to go, but I may have to. I'm supposed to help out with face painting, but I would rather spend the day at the beach or something. I don't want to hang out with a bunch of people who hate me. By now I'm sure all of the guys know HJ's side of the story and hate me too. But you know what? I really don't care anymore. I could hate every single one of them back. But I don't. I just dont want to be around them for a while. I'm still really hurt and need time to heal. I don't want to stay here anymore, but I have no place I can go. Now I have truly lost everything.
These people were the only people I felt like I had in the world. But now I know I never had them at all. That they all hated me and thought I was fake. I was totally clueless that they felt that way. I thought they actually liked me.
I was the scapegoat for all of their problems this time, but never again. I will never take responsibility for things that aren't true. I know I wasn't totally at fault in this situation, especially compared to some of the girls accusing me. But when you have 20 girls surrounding you, screaming, cussing and telling you how much they hate you, it makes you take a step back and analyze what you did to cause all of it. And that's what I did - and it made my mom really upset. But I had to look inside of myself and try to figure out what I did wrong. I know I've said some mean things before, but not enough to cause the whole girls' dorm to turn on me...

That's where the entry ends. The next one talks about how RJ came up to me asking to talk after the Halloween party (that I did end up going to, dressed in black with black lipstick natch.). He confronted me about the rumors of "us," saying that HJ had told him she heard the rumor straight from my mouth. The irony of it all, and what I would have never said to his face, was that I hardly gave him the time of day in my thoughts. In the words of my 15 year old self: "We've talked all of three times, and all of a sudden we have Something Going On?!?!" Today I can look back on that exchange and laugh, but at the time and for the culture it was a pretty serious accusation of my having a "Chapter Two" problem. At the time, a rumor like that was a powerful tool to break one's reputation; while it sounds like something out of an Austen novel, it was a very real reality.
I follow up with a statement that "People here are so petty and fake it makes me sick. But it also makes me want to become a better person, and more real."
Frankly I am a little flabbergasted at my little 15-year-old self determining to work harder, be better etc etc after such a traumatic event. But I suppose in a culture that stressed striving for perfection, it was really the only tool I had to cope. While, on one hand, we could exonerate ourselves say that the events stemmed from a very unhealthy culture created by the administration in the school, we instead chose to look at as another reason to try examine our pieces and parts, and to rebuild ourselves the image of the church ideal. To me at 15, to be "more real" meant to try to be more perfect - to strive for an unattainable goal.
The diary ends after the 29th. It doesn't cover my 16th birthday (that fateful day when the headmistress of the school described, in lurid detail OVER MY BIRTHDAY CAKE, the sacred sexual rite that she and her husband had to perform as a part of the Unification Church marriage) the following day.
The next diary, I am sad to say, was burned in one of those symbolic burning ceremonies we did in the church. It was my way of trying to let "S" go and let go of that inner self that was fighting the mind control. These days I really regret burning those words and those memories. I suppose the more that we dig, the more will be uncovered from the proverbial ashes.

<3 ingness to you and thank you for your sharing.

Jen

Hell is a dorm room in Bridgeport.

2012-10-07T11:20:00.002-07:00

At twenty-six, I'm still grappling with social acceptance. I'm learning that the cliques that existed throughout school have persevered into the adult world. Whether at work, social dancing, or amongst a group of friends there is still a prevailing social hierarchy, and somehow I always would end up the odd man out. No matter how hard I'd try, how casual I'd act, or friendly I'd try to appear, it seemed to me that people could subconsciously read I was not fit for popularity.

During sixth and seventh grade, I had no friends. I sat and ate lunch everyday alone, and was embarrassingly invited to slumber parties at the homes of popular girls by their mothers. Finally, towards the end of 7th grade I made friends with a half-Chinese girl whose obsession with Sailor Moon matched my own. By ninth grade, I began to wonder if people could have a biological inclination towards being a loser.

When my mother left my dad, she took a job being the 'Dorm Mom' (dormitory supervisor) of the boys floor in a Unification Church run boarding school called New Eden Academy, located on the campus of University of Bridgeport. I thought this would be a whole new ballgame; a school full second-generation Moonie kids like me. I was sure to make friends, after all, weren't they just like me?

I anticipated the arrival of my fellow students with anxiety and excitement. Instead of a wave, they trickled in and began filling the dorm rooms like a persistent flood. The tsunami would come in the direction from the pacific islands, as the bad-ass manifestation of my freshman woes arrived on the girls floor. Along with a large posse of the 'cool kids', she and many of the upperclassman went out to the beach of the long island sound near the bandstand. Somewhere, meters above the supposed buried remains of Barnum and Bailey's elephants, they all popped prescription pills and drank until they were trashed. I remember one particular girl being escorted down the hallway by an adult, trudging like a zombie as she stared blankly ahead of her. Instead of taking her to the hospital for the potent mixture of booze and pills, the adults felt it best to put her to bed, and we were discouraged from touching her as she might pass on the evil spirits that inhabited her while being high.

My sister and I were outsiders from the beginning; as our painted cinderblock bedroom was decorated with warm wood furniture and trinkets brought from our former home in Mesa, while everyone else made due with the brown metal bunk bed sets and school provided desks. Also having a mother working for the school put us on the outside, as we were easiest to suspect of ratting someone out. We were disregarded and disrespected from the start of the year. The boys on the third floor would often break into my mother's apartment with only a credit card to trip the lock, and steal anything of monetary value. The girls paired off into petty groups and arranged themselves into a social hierarchy that was meaningless outside the school.

I continually catapulted myself into the groups of girls who I vied to be friends with. I transformed myself into something I thought they'd like, I began to dress 'hip hop' (via Japan?) and pretend to like r&b music. To this day JaRule and Ashanti remind me of walking down the dingy carpeted hallways of the dorm floor listening to terrible top 100 hits of 2001 being blared on dorm room stereos. I began swearing like a sailor, dishing out attitude to instructors, my mother, and my sister. I'd invite myself into the dorm rooms at night where the girls would gather to gossip. No one escaped ridicule; teachers were slandered, students had their purity questioned, and everyone outside their circle was deemed pathetic. I tried everything to squeeze myself into the inner circle. I made everyone poster-board sized birthday cards with custom illustrations for everyone to sign, I bought mix cds from one of the boys upstairs even though I had Napster on my mother's computer. I'd tag along to basketball games played outside the dorm room in a driveway of 'The Wisteria House', and abandoned Victorian house used for storage across the street. I played musical rooms, moving out of my sister's room into a room with a friend, and into my own room when I thought it would affect my social status.

When I had my own room, I let girls who were having affairs with 'brothers' upstairs use my room for philandering while I waited in the hallway or lounge for them to finish. I even delved down the rabbit hole of becoming an excellent shit-talker, if only I knew how to cover up my tracks. I have a vivid memory of three boys from the school lifting me up out of the lounge couches and bringing me into a spare office room, plopping me infront of the school's pious and polished student president, who proceeded to lecture me on the source of a rumor involving him and my older sister (developed by my jealous half-Korean roommate, and propagated by me.)

I joined the gossip sessions with gusto, hoping to provide some kind of information that would make me seem invaluable. All it did was construct the social gallows in which my sister and I would hang from. The ringleader of all things chaotic on the girls floor nicknamed me 'weasel', because "I had a face like one". While also being a pipeline for school gossip and petty drama, she was also the 'executor' of social justice when it seemed fit.

One night, the air was particularly tense and the girls of our dorm floor called a meeting. My sister and I were summoned to the center of the lounge room where we were accused of a variety of crimes. Despite my sister's intelligence to stay out of the schools drama and to keep to herself, she was accused of using her mystery and feminine wiles to lure our brothers into sin. We were both accused of being the source of all the school's gossip, and that we were plaguing everyone in the school with lies. We were even accused of witchcraft, which later came to play a role in how we found a safe haven from the other girls. The tension escalated to shouting, most of it is a blur to me now because all I remember is the static, noise, and angry faces of the other girls as they outright claimed to hate us. I remember the ringleader throwing her husky limbs in our general direction with threats to get physical. What I don't remember is how it ended. I remember my sister and I hiding in her room, curled up into balls on the floor trying to process the shock. Occasionally, one of the girls would knock on the door to throw in a few last words of hate, disguised as coming to check in on us. Walking the halls and going to class the next day felt like being blacklisted. Everyone ignored us, I remember the only other freshman girl in the school wringing out a smirk on her ugly monkey face, while the French girl shouted at me to 'get over it'.

Outside of each other, my sister and I were only able to salvage two or three friends to keep us company. One day school student who had no real involvement with the drama within the walls, one girl from Alaska who was quiet and reserved, and my former melodramatic half-Korean roommate. As a joke referencing a group of villains from the Sailor Moon comic series (which I was still obsessed with) I nicknamed our group 'The Witches Five' as my sister and I had been accused of. We kept to each other's company when we weren't hidden away in our own rooms. One weekend we went away to my former roommate's home in Westchester, and all dressed up like 'goths'. I don't know if any of us really had any idea what goth culture was like, but I remember trying to wear all black and decorating our faces in blue and black lipstick and hitting up the local pizza joint, trying to look as badass as a bunch of high school cult raised kids can.

Even the funny memories of our year in Bridgeport aren't funny anymore. The slogans the boys upstairs came up with, all said imitating the headmaster's voice; "No Hope for No Eden!" or "Whaddr'you doing?" don't crack a genuine smile on my face, just a grimace.

I've blocked out most my memories of that year, none of the people there made enough of an impression on my life in a positive way except for perpetuating the feelings of loneliness and un-acceptance. When I'd accidentally run into old classmates from the boarding school, we would mutually blank each other or I'd have to endure their fake warmth and smiles, as if they'd white washed the memory of their faces turning red, screaming slander into my face and decorating me with spittle.

It was there, a brick institution campus squeezed into the middle of the ghetto, that I learned I was like no one. That I didn't belong with the 'outside' kids I'd grown up with, because their culture and 'blood-lineage' was so different from my own. Amongst the Moonie kids I was just as alien, as we were apparently weird beyond their spectrum of acceptance. We were like dirty gypsy kids who would continue to be moved around, never allowing to put down roots or to develop acceptance of our own.

To this day I avoid contact with any of the people I knew from Bridgeport, it's a can of worms I'm not willing to open. After all, twelve years later I should be 'over it' by now, but instead I've chosen to white them all out in my mind. However, I can't deny it formulated me into a person that is wary of others and unable to cope with the staggering loneliness that plagues me when I know I'll never fully be accepted amongst others.

I still think Bridgeport is a shithole.

Love need not be...

2012-09-05T09:12:00.000-07:00

I wasn't even looking for words that day...but they still came in loud and clear.

Chicago Hangovers

2012-08-30T22:28:00.000-07:00

To pickup where the thread of the story left off, shortly after revealing our family's deep, dark secret to "S", my mother sent me on another Pure Love Alliance tour. This one was for a month; two weeks were to be spent preaching, rallying and doing community service in the USA, and the other two weeks were to be spent in Europe.

In the hiatus between the '99 and '00 tours, I had been asked to join the PR team for the organization. Part of me was flattered and the other part was nervous about being separated from friends and put in any kind of media spotlight. The depression that had weighed down upon me the past months hit me hard when I joined the tour and no longer had access to my late night discussions with "S".

Suddenly there was no sounding board for the madness swirling around in my head. Being digitally disconnected from him almost made it as though he did no exist. He and his band were to join the tour towards the end in New York, but in front of other church members we would have to put up a front of distance; no one could know that I looked at this person as my lifeline.

The day after joining the tour, I was taken to a Center in Chicago. The friends that I had made during the last tour were sleeping in pews in a local Chicago church and I longed for the camaraderie that I was suddenly disconnected from. I had always hated Centers; to me they represented communal living at its worst. Back in the 1970s, at the height of the church's appeal, living there might have felt different. It might have felt as though there was a purpose to sleeping 10 people to a room and waking up in the bleak morning hours to pray and fundraise for the church.

These Centers would be full of life and young people again a few years later, in heyday of STF. But that, as they say, is a story for another day. The single night I spent in the Chicago Center, the large house was nearly empty. After a fitful night, I crept downstairs for breakfast.

It was a strange feeling, as though I was a guest in a stranger's home, and the host was nowhere to be found. Despite distinctly feeling like an invader, I managed to rummage up some cheerios. Across the large table, someone else joined me in silence for breakfast. The awkwardness hung in the air until he got up and cleared his place. The emptiness of the house bore down on me - I didn't know where to go or what to do with myself. I knew I was supposed to have a job somewhere here, but without any direction I felt lost.

So like Alice, I thought it might be good advice to "stay where you are until someone finds you." Eventually the head of the PLA Public Relations team found me. He was an older First Gen, who always struck me as looking a little bit like Christopher Reeves. He told me to come and have morning service with him.

I followed him into the Prayer Room, a room that all Moonie homes had, and together we bowed to the photograph of True Parents. He began reading from one of the large leather bound texts that the church published, commemorating Rev. Moon's words. As always, I had a hard time concentrating on the words. Rarely did they seem cohesive, driving to a point. My mind would always wander.

Removed from the stress and fear, and the agony, of home, I was like a bottle under pressure. That time to think was like the pressure building up behind the cork that I had stuffed into my emotions. I knew that I had had to keep it together while I was at home; if I had fallen apart, I was afraid that my mother would come undone. And while I felt that she was a dubious caretaker, at best, I knew that she was the glue keeping the world intact. Truthfully, I had always felt like I was her glue.

But here, hundreds of miles away from home, I felt my tightly-wound self beginning to unravel. My heart felt saturated with tears and suddenly I realized that I was truly alone in a large, cold house, in an unfamiliar city, with a strange man. And he was speaking to me; he was asking me to pray to end the service.

Kneeling down with my elbows on the floor and my forehead inches from my knees, I began: "Heavenly Father..." It had been the first time I had prayed in months. God and I had hardly been on speaking terms, and now was not the time for me to say to him what I needed to say. Not with an audience. The words I kept civil and polite; I prayed for my fellow Second Gen on the PLA tour, wishing them victory. They were generic words, ones that anyone listening would nod in agreement to, whispering "Yes, Father" as was the habit of many members.

Despite the blandness of my words, they came out in racking sobs. I choked on every word as my body shook with grief and emotion. The syntax was like filling in a Mad Libs from the jargon I had learned over the years; the true prayer was in my heart, as the grief poured out. It was a desperate call for help, for relief. While the dead words dropped off of my tongue, I sent my SOS upward.

When my prayer was over, I wiped my eyes and my nose. Robert, the first gen, looked at me with wide eyes and a simpering smile that made me sick. "You cried for your brothers and sisters." I looked down and away, wondering how anyone could be so naive.

With the prayer service ended, he handed me two dollars and asked me to get him a paper. I have had some difficult jobs in my years, ones where I knew I was under-qualified and in over my head. Never had I felt so unready to face a task; braving the quiet suburban streets of a Chicago morning to find a morning paper felt insurmountable. I didn't know where to look, but I knew that eventually I might find a vending machine with the Chicago Sun-Times.

Block after block I looked in vain, feeling hungover from the morning's cry. And like a drunkard, I allowed myself the only respite from the hangover that I knew: indulgence. At first the tears hid behind my eyes. By the time I found a vending machine they were threatening advance. Then I saw that the machines only took quarters; the paper money I had been given was useless. Tears spilled down my chin and dribbled into the hollow of my collarbone, down my chest.

Still crying, and assuredly looking frighteningly out of place in the respectable neighborhood, I wandered until I found another person on the street. In her heels and business suit, she was probably on her way to work and unprepared for the visual assault that I was. In the calmest voice I could muster, I asked if she had change for my dollar bills.

With wide eyes that she kept fixed on me, she fished change out of her purse and handed it to me. "Keep it," she said, as though she knew that was the closest she could get to comforting me. Then, without looking back, she quickly walked away.

Watching her back recede to the "click, click, click" of her heels, I felt something. Starting from my temples, down to my ears, and inching its way into my toes I felt a red-hot shame spread over me. That quiet, Chicago morning, I stood on a street corner with a newspaper bleeding its ink onto my fingertips and I wished that I could bury myself beneath the concrete. My life as an Untouchable was beginning...

End of the Lunar Oligarchy?

2012-08-24T15:15:00.001-07:00

A few days ago my mother wrote to me, saying that Rev. Moon was in the hospital with only a 50/50 chance of making it. Without responding, I closed my email and walked out of the room. While not shaken, it was certainly news for me to contemplate.

On some level it was like being told that your unkind father or grandfather, who has spurned your love, was wasting away. I had tried so hard to love this man, to envision him as my father and my spiritual guide. His words and teaching became the torment of my youth, as I struggled to fit into a mold so constricting that it stunted years of growth.

A tiny tinge of regret blossomed in the pit of my stomach while I tried to stomp it out. Not regret for having been unable to win his love - but regret that it had taken me so long to let go and walk away. This man was the reason that I was born; I was conceived out of a duty towards him. My conception likely had nothing to do with love, other than a misguided attempt at loving someone else's notion of god.

These days I am not bitter. Instead I lost my mother-tongue and celebrated its loss. But like a wild-child I have not yet learned any fluency in the world I was sheltered from for so long. Perhaps there is an endearing, naive quality to my linguistic starts, stops and stutters. Thus far, the world I was taught to fear has embraced me.

This day has been on this horizon for many years. Even a false-messiah cannot live forever. He used to speak of souls that would drag your spirit down to the pits of hell if you disobeyed his doctrine. What awaits you on the other side, sir?

When the Oligarch is gone, then the in-fighting will really begin. The saddest part is that it will be the innocent and faithful who will be most hurt. They think that the weight of their soul, and those of all lineally connected to them, hangs in the balance.

What a beautiful day it is to be free...