I have fantasized about being stranded on an island with no boat home, just enough food, and an endless supply of juice for my computer battery. Island life would create the buffer I need to protect my writing projects from the countless attacks of daily life. My mind would be clear and words would flow like water over smooth stone. Every breath would birth words of clarity, poetry, and inspiration. My productivity would soar through the roof of my humble hut and I’d return home with a complete manuscript. 

When I was twelve, maybe thirteen, a tattered folder held scraps of paper that I had trusted to hold my poems, but I didn’t know what to do with them until the day my sister found the cows first. You see…after school, we would head out into the pastures to call the cows in for milking. 

Ten years ago - on May 28, 2024 - I snapped out of the cultic group that I was tethered to for almost two decades. To celebrate, I spent this past weekend quietly, giving myself space to sleep, muse, eat simply, be in nature, and to write less than I thought I would.

The tide of Idealism. 

I think it’s safe to say that most survivors of cultic abuse possess an inherent and sometimes exaggerated sense of idealism. It can be a beautiful thing and it can get us into trouble. I’ve noticed that most of us survivors are willing to do more than our fair share for a good cause. This is certainly the case for me. Thinking I needed to facilitate a public event, (instead of a private dance party) is just one example of my overzealous idealism being in the driver's seat. Devoting countless hours to a mission-driven project is another. This makes me wonder:

When Idealism is at the wheel, who is really driving?

When life wins, we get creative. We write. 

Warning: this essay contains references to suicide, death and stunningly beautiful writing.

In the wider spectrum of things, it's a lame example. But it’s fresh and personal, so I’ll use it:

Last week’s realization that I Wanna Dance was born after I caught a life-damning, internal diatribe red-handed and stopped it in it's tracks. It planned to snuff joy out of my life, pushing me to do something publicly that I wasn't ready to do, nor did I want to. Had I succumbed to its motives, I'd be involved right now in a life-draining project, driven by a pattern that was wired into me during my years of being a subtle, and not so subtle, recruiter.

I want to dance! But I didn’t know ... til I finally got out of the box I put myself in.

Last week was ‘one of those weeks’.

I’m guessing you know what I mean. We’ve all had them, right?

Milieu - pronounced ‘mil you’ - is a funny French word - with a flair or formality - refering to the environment in which we live. I think of it as the social air we breathe. Milieu Control is one of the eight criteria of ‘brainwashing’ identified by Robert Jay Lifton in his research on communist China in the 1950s.

“Point and flex. Point and flex.” Andrea’s cheery voice encourages me as I lay, flat on my back, one leg straight in the air. A tiny rivulet of sweat drips from my pits. I’m in the fourth week of a month-long intensive and it feels good to say that I feel good. My back muscles are stronger than they were a month ago. I smile as I flex and then... a cramp seizes my foot. Yikes! I grit my teeth to power through, trying to point, but it only gets worse. I lower my leg, humbled. Flexing and pointing is off the table. I wiggle my foot, and breathe through the pain until it subsides.