I know there are a lot of negatives with leaving the cult. Family disowns us in varying degrees (divorce, banishment), dynamics of friendships and relationships change, the feelings of betrayal are very real and hurtful, the feelings of embarrassment we were deceived for so long, the frustration that comes with wanting close friends and family seeing the light but they remain stubbornly blind, the fear and reality that everything we thought we knew about every aspect was built in a fraud and we have to start over and reinvent ourselves, etc.
But we are free. "Apostate" in Greek originates from "run away slave". How fitting. I imagine being a slave on a plantation in the 1850's. Freedom isn't even really a thought in my mind because being a slave is all I know. But I over the years I learn to read a little bit. I'm able to listen to my masters talk of life on the frontier, and I begin to develop a blurry concept of freedom. Of being my own man. Eventually I come to the depressing realizations of my own reality. After loosely devising a plan, I find myself slipping away in the middle of the night with nothing but a blanket, a few pieces of bread and jerky and the clothes on my back. Heading west.
Fast forward.
Somehow I make it out of the south. I've found myself in free man's country. I don't know what to do with my freedom, I don't have a penny to my name, no house, no friends or family. It's a scary time of the unknown, but I won't go back. I'm free. That's all that matters. I don't know who I am or where I'm heading, but I'll be putting one foot in front of the other as a free man. And that's all that matters.
We are free from the cult. We don't need to know what we believe now or where we are going. Bask in and enjoy the current reality that YOU ARE FREE!
of the exit experience. The day I got my letter from SLC confirming that I was no longer a cult member, I could not stop smiling. At that point I hadn't been to a mormon church in 13 years and hadn't believed for 15 years.
And yet - that official statement - I was part of the human race again with nothing to make me feel I need to be an example or keep myself separate from the world.
I am happy that you are now free. I was never a mormon but I was a slave also (to my insecurity). I looked at almost every 'religion' for 'truth' but it always led to the same place--subjecting myself to some other person's (or people's) opinion of what truth is. I (after most of my life's searching) decided that it was time to look elsewhere. After carrying my Bible around all those years, I decided to READ it (straight from the horse's mouth--right!). I discovered that the things that I had been told over the years was mostly pure bull shit according to the Bible. Wow! All those years wasted trying to find truth when I had been carrying it around all along! Wish I could turn the clock back. My advice to anyone reading this post is to refuse to be sucked in to any organized religion and go straight to the source of truth. The truth is 'God is love'. All the rest is just more 'bull shit'.
I was BIC, in an important, wealthy GA family. Our family members were raised to honor our Mormon ancestors, who were neighbors of JS, and among those first members. We heard all their stories and read all their diaries. We had their portraits in our homes. We went to BYU, where buildings were named after our ancestors, and we named our children after them. I never felt perfect enough to belong to this illustrious family. We were instructed to HONOR our family.
Then I discovered the stories of a Mormon widow ancestor's prime SLC land being confiscated by Brigham Young. She was forced to move with her children to a swampy area by the Great Salt Lake. Another widow ancestor had her wagon and oxen taken away from her by the Mormons, because the church felt that a woman could not go West without a husband. She had sold her house to buy the wagon and oxen, and she and her children spent that winter in a cave. Then there was polygamy, and all that went along with that! ICK!
Anyway, my freedom was to turn my back on the polygamy and hoaxes and lies, and to bring myself and my own children back into the free world. Many of my ancestors, especially the children who died, and the women who were abused, were victims of the cult. I have made things right, for my progeny.
My Mormon family tries to make me feel guilty about leaving my "heritage", and the tell me I'm an apostate. No, the real apostates were those crazies who apostatized from the church of their motherland, to join JS's satanic cult. I'm merely going back to Christianity and freedom.
Strange, that the fanatics think I'm trapped by Satan, and imprisoned in ignorance from believing Mormonism, prevented from being with my children in the hereafter--when the truth is that my children and I are now free!
And freedom is something money can't buy. Especially being freed from the mental prison we were in for so many years. You really do feel it. You think about how it was when you were worried about stupid shit that you never should have had invade your life at all. But you realize that it hasn't entered your mind in years. You really are free.