Second Generation: Welcome to Holland

This came up on a discussion board I’m a member of recently, and has stirred up a lot of memories I thought I had dealt with.

A parent asked the participants what we thought the best way of transitioning children out of the cult was. I recommended that she not do what my parents did. I wasn’t exactly a child when we exited, but I was very naive, and extremely sheltered, and still living at home.

I can’t recall the exact details (beyond the sermon from the mount which I can recall as vividly as if it were yesterday) of when and how we finally decided to exit, beyond a brief “No point in going to church anymore is there?” “Not really.” and that was the extent of the conversation.

What happened after the conversation, however, was a complete 180-degree turnaround, at least from my (true believer’s) point of view.

Not bad enough my church had told me to stop believing what it had brainwashed me into believing, all those years, now my parents were acting as though we had never even attended a church, let alone done anything out of sync with the rest of the world.

Members of a cult, modern psychology asserts, often develop what is called a cult personality. This personality is what allows them to stay in a controlled environment for so long.

After removing themselves from the controlled environment, they must then rediscover their pre-cult personality, a process which varies in length for each individual.

For first-generation cult members it can be as simple as flipping a switch.

Which is all well and good, but what do you do, when the only personality you have ever had is the one that’s been shaped by the cult?

Add to that the indignity of the others around you being able to go right back to “normal”, without a hitch, and that creates far more problems than it solves.

Imagine the worst kind of culture shock you have ever experienced. Now imagine that the strange new foreign country you have suddenly been dropped into with zero knowledge of the language, customs or traditions, is your own family.

To second-generation members of the WCG who exited at or around the time of the changes, whose families were able to transition smoothly and they weren’t, I offer the poem “Welcome to Holland”.

It was written by a mother, to express a parent’s reaction upon learning they have a newly-born disabled child. A lot of the verses can also apply to a true believer, born and bred into the cult, who is exiting a Church of God system for the first time. The emphasis in the following passages is mine.

Excerpt of “Welcome to Holland” by Emily Perl Kingsley

It’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip – to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands.

The stewardess comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland.”

“Holland?!?” you say. “What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy.”

But there’s been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing [to remember] is that they haven’t taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It’s just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It’s just a different place. It’s slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around…. and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills….and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy… and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned.”

———-

But… if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things … about Holland.