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How do you deal with family?
This is an invitation for contributions. It seems that many people who have recovered from religious indoctrination and feel rather healed in their personal lives still have a great challenge when it comes to relating to family members who are still "in the fold." What have you found works for you? Please write and I will post your insights for the benefit of others, as well as share some thoughts of my own. marlene
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Saying good bye to Dogma
Growing up Catholic did not damage me so completely as raising my own children Catholic did. This is backfiring in a major way with my daughter who has begun to indoctrinate my 5 year old grand daughter in preparation for sending her to Catholic kindergarten and eventually to a K-8 Catholic school down the street where her older cousins are attending. Already she is spouting nonsense statements like "God loves everyone" and all I can say is "well, not everyone believes that... I don't" and let it go because otherwise her mother will come down on me and limit my contact with her. I've been sowing little seeds such as the Bible is a book of fairy tales and angels are just like tinker bell etc. but as soon as she starts school in earnest I'll have my work cut out for me. I consider myself the antidote to her Catholic education. My daughter and son in law know exactly how I feel but they can't understand how a person can become an ex-Catholic after being raised "in the faith." I have explained until I'm blue in the face that I have studied and read and thought about it for years before I came to the conclusion that it is all a sham but they just don't get it. They are so indoctrinated that they are afraid to think about it. It is after all a mortal sin to question the doctrine. I will fight to my death to save that child from indoctrination. I will continue to keep my comments nonconfrontational and light but continuous until I draw my last breath. I am also leaving a letter behind that explains my transformation from Catholic to Atheist to her when I'm no longer on this planet.
Monica Ackerman
This is such an important
This is such an important question. I keep thinking that someone should pull together all of our experiences and write a book. What recovering fundamentalist wouldn't buy it?!!!
In my own family, some members have made very little movement away from the nondenominational evangelical religion we grew up in. Some are more conservative than ever. I find that those doors for conversation simply aren't open.
The only thing that seems to soften things a bit is nurturing my personal relationships with them. (Sometimes I feel like doing the opposite because their selfish false cruel dogmas are so offensive to me!)
As long as I am true to myself and we keep the other aspects of our friendship, at least they are reminded that godless people aren't all bad people. Just by being myself, I am oppening a wedge in that ugly teaching that says only Christians have a moral core. Everyone else actually DESERVES to be tortured for eternity. And it is a good reminder for me that despite their immoral and false beliefs, they are basically decent people --like me.