On Grieving and Leaving a Cult: Survivor Laura

 

By Laura Launderville

A few weeks ago, I stopped to play the piano at my small town’s municipal building. Some days I feel drawn to the safety and freedom of feeling my fingers on the keys of a piano and the melody that flows from it. I learned to play the piano when I was fifteen. For years, I longed to be able to play and contribute a talent to the church and God. I had started to learn as a child but had forgotten how to play later on due to trauma. As a teen, I asked my twin sister, Lydia, to help me learn. She had been playing since the age of seven and was more than happy to help me. She also knew how special it was for me to learn. I finally learned and was able to contribute what little I could.

For me though, music became an escape. I could play and my emotions, usually complex, would flow out in a melody. Learning to play, I, of course, had to learn hymns to play in church. Original music was discouraged unless the pastor could look over the lyrics to the song. Because he would chastise us, questioning whether or not we were playing “worldly” music or having sinful thoughts while playing. This actually gave me great anxiety. Regardless, if I knew what was in my heart. For those of us, who wrote melody, rather than lyrics, it became tricky, and often to play an original work was risky. I won’t lie, my stubbornness would get the better of me and I would play what was on my heart.

Those finial years, my melodies were sad, hurt and confused. I would be lost in music, look out at the congregation and my heart was breaking. I would scan the faces of the congregation, my community and would fight back tears. The pain of how I and my family were being treated was crushing. The feeling of being an outcast, within the only community you ever knew, the one you were never to dare to leave, is an incredible lonely and awful feeling. Even to this day, thinking and trying to explain those feelings chokes me up a little. I can still hear those melodies in my head a little. Sometimes they still will resurface, and I’m playing a song from my cult years.

As I find myself playing the piano, in a back room of my townhall, my fingers unwillingly go to certain keys, and I am playing a song from my childhood. The melody is broken. My fingers miss certain notes, it sounds choppy and rusty. But I know the song. “There is a place of quiet rest, near to the heart of God….” The words come back matching the notes. I feel my chest ache. And my eyes start to sting as I continue to play. This song was from my days in the church. My community.

Leaving a cult is always the right thing to do. Always. No one was ever meant to be born in one. I’m certain of that. But there will always be a pain that hits me. This was the only life I knew. My childhood. My culture. My community. My church. My family. When I left, I was no longer a part of them. I was shunned. Disowned. I often wonder if they have forgotten about me. My name was removed from the “Lamb’s Book of Life.” According to their teachings, I will never be in Heaven, because I left. Leaving was evidence that I was not fully a part of them. Although I know the truth, my heart was sincere. I loved Jesus with all my heart. I just stopped seeing Him the same way as they did. And I took this song with me.

I feel the tears rolling down my cheeks as I continue to play, causing me to stumble on the melody. I am finding this emotion is called grief. What I have found, leaving a cult, is also leaving your community. There is still a hole where once my community used to be. A hole where childhood friendships used to be; we may have been different with our long dresses and hair, but they were friendships, and they were dear to my heart. There’s a hole where I remember the feeling of holding my nephews and nieces in my arms and the ache of knowing that I most likely will not get to hug them ever again. The hole of loss of siblings and the family that we might have been. The hole of realizing that the shepherd was leading the flock into destruction. The hole of realizing that everything you knew was a lie. The hole of a community lost. And sometimes those holes feel deep in your heart. And you have to grieve. Yes, my life is so much better now. I’m free. I’m safe. I’m healing. I’m thriving. But on some days, I still sit at a piano and my fingers rest on the keys and they remember a melody of my childhood. A childhood in a cult. And I grieve.

Part of healing from a cult, is grieving that cult. This has been one of the toughest things for me after leaving the cult I was born and raised in. Because grief is tough. It’s messy. It’s uncomfortable. But it will be felt. More often than not, it was easier to say, “It was what it was,” and that is what comes from being a cult kid, then to sit and feel the emotions of grief. But grief can be healthy. And it’s also imperative for our healing. Because you grieve the cult does not mean you want to go back to it. It means that it was a part of your life. For some of us, it was all we knew. And part of saying goodbye to a cult was also saying goodbye to a part of you that you only knew for so long. Grief has no timetable. Take your time. Grieve

This story was shared as part of the project called Out of Oceania: Survivors Share Their Stories, an originial series by this blog. To read more stories, click here.