Guilt

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  that is the case, His ear is open to their cry, not ours. We could actually make ourselves His enemies if we are hurting those with less power or voice than us. That includes ethnic minorities, foreigners, marginalized communities, people with less economic or educational privilege, employees, those who struggle with addictions or mental illness, LGBTQ individuals, prisoners and ex-convicts, those whose body types don’t fit the “ideal,” those who find themselves homeless, immigrants, older adults, disabled people—and the list goes on indefinitely. It doesn’t matter whether we agree with their lifestyle choices or theology; we are called and commanded to love, serve, protect, and care for those around us. We are all God’s family, and God loves us all equally. He asks us to do the same. Love that is conditional is not love at all. And prayers with blood on our hands are not prayers at all. These seven useless prayers— hypocritical prayers babbling prayers bitter prayers complacent prayers narcissistic prayers boomerang prayers oppressor prayers —all highlight the same thing: God cares more about who we are than what we say. He lamented about Israel, “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me” (Isaiah 29:13). God is a gracious, generous God who hears us when we pray. Rest assured: God does want to listen to us. We don’t have to approach Him in fear or guilt. We do, however, have to take seriously the motivations and behaviors that surround our prayers. We are speaking with God, after all, and He is holy, powerful, and perfect in every way. King Solomon reminds us: Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. Go near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools, who do not know that they do wrong. Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God. God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few. Ecclesiastes 5:1–2 In other words, we need to be humble and teachable when we come into God’s presence. He might want to address something under the surface that we didn’t realize needed adjustment. That’s a good thing. God’s correction is always to our benefit. We can probably all admit that there have been times when our prayers have fallen into one or more of the above categories. But let’s not stay there. Let’s allow God to search our hearts, educate our minds, correct our steps, and empower our prayer lives. You can eliminate useless prayers, starting now. And I don’t know who else needs to hear this, but you can throw out that bag of single socks too.

• From Real Sex for Real Women (2008)

  When she left home to go to college she tried to reinvent herself as a “good girl.” Although she felt she had succeeded in this, she still feels guilty about her past, and is eager to distance herself from anything she considers “dirty.” Jasmine also said she was ashamed of her genitals and referred to them only as “down there.” To encourage Jasmine to be more comfortable with her sexuality, I asked her to write a list of all the things she liked about sex with Marc. We also discussed how negative messages about sex from our parents can lead to guilt, inhibitions, and sexual shame. Jasmine agreed that she’d been taught that “nice girls don’t have sex,” but that she wanted to let go of that belief. As part of her homework I asked Jasmine to become more informed about her genital anatomy and to look at her genitals in a handheld mirror. I hoped, in time, Jasmine would find the idea of Marc being close to her genitals less shocking and uncomfortable. I recommended to Marc that he should take the issue of oral sex off the table for the moment. Rather than bringing it up every time they were intimate, I suggested that Marc let Jasmine lead the way. I felt that once Marc and Jasmine were married, Jasmine’s inhibitions in the bedroom would slowly start to resolve themselves. I also asked Marc to compliment Jasmine’s genitals to make her less insecure about their appearance and odor. And I suggested that he compliment her sexual technique overall to boost her confidence. What happened? Within a few months Jasmine became more sexually adventurous and open to the idea of giving and receiving oral sex, although it’s still not one of her favorite activities. Marc is happier with their sex life and is now content to let Jasmine take the lead. Find a compromise If you have a sexual hang-up, avoid “banning” a particular act or position. Instead, talk to your partner to see if you can reach a compromise. And work at challenging and overcoming inhibitions—this will help you and your relationship to grow, both in and out of bed. Tried-and-tested PositionsSome of the best positions are the ones that are most commonly used. They are comfortable and pleasurable for both partners, and are accessible to most couples. What makes these positions so beloved? They give you intimacy, a fantastic sensory experience, and reliably fulfilling sex—perfect for days when all you want is the moves that work. Far from being mundane, with a few variations (and a couple of pillows), you can bring some fireworks to these everyday greats.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  The cops immediately separated us. Her, they took over to the ambulance. Me, they asked me if I felt OK and I replied with a quite obviously soggy yes. They had a paramedic come over and “check me out” but no one was very worried about me since I could walk and talk. I hadn’t a bruise or bump or cut on me, other than the airbag burns on my inner arms. My distinguishing characteristic: shit-faced. The emotions all went in the direction of the pregnant woman and her unborn child. Except mine. Mine floated toward nothingness. While the cop put me through my paces, nearly all of which I failed in that ever so slight way that is inevitable given the amount I’d consumed, I thought of my mother. Literally - when the cop had me close my eyes and attempt that finger to the nose thing? I saw my mother’s face. Puffy with drink and covered in sadness … not a maternal, Madonna sadness. A sadness made from joy being siphoned from your life a year at a time. I have a photo of my mother when she was a girl. It was between leg and hip operations. In this photo she was not in a body cast. It was probably taken a few years before my grandmother divorced my grandfather for molesting my mother’s sisters. She looks to be about 13. It is the sweetest girl face you have ever seen, but something in the tilt of her head, something in the lowered gaze, you can already see the sadness in her. I know this isn’t true, but in some ways, I can see the woman who would pick up a bottle of vodka and never put it down. I can see the bottle of sleeping pills. The marriage that went so horribly wrong, and still she couldn’t leave. I can see the mother whose children drifted so quickly away from her like fish cut loose. I can see the Cancer that came to the rescue, for as her sister said to me shortly before she died, “Every day of her sweet life she was in pain, of one sort or another. At least now she’ll have peace.” Where does repressed pain and rage go in a body? Does the wound of daughter turn to something else if left unattended? Does it bloom in the belly like an anti-child, like an organic mass made of emotions that didn’t have anywhere to go? How do we name the pain of rage in a woman? Mother? I cannot see in her face that her children gave her joy, though she said that to me the week before she died, and I thought, looking at her milk white shrunken body, almost the body of a girl, how?

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  over the difficult work we need to be doing. As Jeremiah wrote, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? ‘I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind’” (17:9–10). We need God to unmask and unpack the hidden motivations of our hearts. Let’s look in more detail at some of the reasons we might engage in spiritual bypassing, particularly with regard to prayer. 1. To avoid dealing with our own pain and trauma I mentioned in an earlier chapter that one of the great benefits of prayer is that it helps us process pain, trouble, and trauma. Don’t use prayer to cover up pain— use it to deal with it. To explore it. To find areas where you need additional resources or help. Don’t let anyone tell you that your depression would go away, or you would overcome addiction if you “just had more faith.” They don’t know your faith level. Only God does. Yes, faith is essential, and prayer is always helpful. But there are some things in life that take wisdom, understanding, and hard work. 2. To avoid feeling someone else’s pain Be careful not to reply too quickly, “I’ll pray for you,” or, “You should pray about that.” First, sit with their pain. Understand their question or concern. Be wary of the human tendency to keep other people’s pain at arm’s length. Once you’ve truly entered into their world, once you’ve engaged empathy and compassion, then prayer is usually appropriate (and better received). Again, though, don’t limit your response to prayer alone if there is something more you can do. 3. To avoid hard work Prayer, faith, heaven, and God are all invisible. Difficult to measure. Subjective. As a result, there is little immediate accountability, and we can deceive ourselves into thinking that we are doing our part.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  My sister said from where they were we looked like we were sobbing. Maybe we were sobbing. I don’t know. I kept the plastic in my pocket like that for years. I still have the red coat - though if there is any trace of ash left, you can’t see it. II. Under Blue Baptismal A FAMILY ON THE BEACH AS IF WE WERE EVER A FAMILY on the beach. When my sister and I were adults we visited my mother and father in Florida. We visited them because of guilt. We visited them because of shame. We visited them because of delusion. We visited them because grown women are idiots. I don’t know why we visited them. I can’t remember. I think my mother begged to see her daughters. Me 26. My sister 34. My mother stayed with her shorter leg on the sand. A father and his two daughters waded into the ocean at the beach in St. Augustine. When we played in the ocean we forgot ourselves: sister, self, father, memory loss. The water in Florida is body temperature. The waves, unless there is weather, are calm. They roll a body gently. I heard a sound from the shore. I saw my mother running, lopsided. I followed her arm and finger to the father face down in the sea. I tasted salt on my own lips. When I finally reached him I could see the moles on his back at the surface of the knee-deep water. Running in water is like running in Jell-O. Almost funny. When I flipped him over, his face was distorted into a grimace - clenched teeth, bulging eyes, purple and white blotching his face. My sister then there. Us pulling his 220 pound of dead weight onto the shore, both screaming at him, “Daddy.” The image of my mother: a tiny squawking penguin with a cane on the shore, too far from her daughters. There are moments between years that surface with a great force when you do not expect it. My father almost dead in front of me. I’m going to say it plain: I could have killed him. I looked down into the flesh losing its color, the popping, staring blue eyes twinning mine, the animal teeth. His face so familiar I couldn’t recognize it. I held his nose closed. I put my mouth to his mouth. I could feel his tongue, his teeth, spittle. His lips were warm but unresponsive. My sister pumped her fists into his chest. His swim trunks were half off. His sex hung harmless. I held my lips to his. I breathed air into his mouth until an ambulance came. Hypoxia is suffocation in water that does not result in death. It may include brain damage and multiple organ failure. My father lost his memory from hypoxia. I did not kill him. I did not save him. How do you live on land? Swimming with Amateurs

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  We still give my friend a hard time about her naiveté. But I wonder, how often do we do the same thing when it comes to problems in our minds and emotions? We ignore warning signs and hope that our traumas and dramas will fix themselves. Even worse, we often use spiritual language to cover up deep issues. We don’t do this intentionally, at least for the most part. But it’s easier to pray about things than to actually put in the work to fix them. This does a disservice to prayer, and it sets us up for failure. Yes, we should pray about everything, but that doesn’t mean prayer alone will fix everything. It was never meant to be a cure-all, a magic potion that would make all pain go away with no effort on our part. Prayer should accompany action, not replace it. Prayer should bring pain points to light, not hide them. Prayer should facilitate healing, not enable continued abuse. Prayer should empower and direct our efforts, not excuse our laziness. “JUST PRAY ABOUT IT” The tendency to use prayer and other spiritual practices or beliefs to avoid doing real work has a name. It’s called spiritual bypassing. The term originated in the field of psychology. Psychologist and professor Dr. Philip Clark defines it as “the avoidance of underlying emotional issues by focusing solely on spiritual beliefs, practices, and experiences.” 1 In other words, spiritual bypassing means that instead of paying the price to understand and fix things that are out of alignment in your thoughts and emotions, you try to cover up the issues and move on by “praying about it,” or “just having faith,” or something similar. We do this more than we probably realize. It can be difficult to identify spiritual bypassing, though. After all, we should turn to prayer when we feel overwhelmed. That’s the premise of the “pray about everything, be anxious about nothing” verse. No matter what needs or problems we face, whether little or big, the Bible tells us to pray, have faith, and trust God.

• From The Lives of Great Christians (2007)

  VI. When he was 18, Augustine began the long process of change, but he did not really make the move toward Christianity until he was 31 years old. A. Augustine learned from a pagan writer, Cicero, that people should seek eternal, not temporal, things. B. Augustine rejected the Bible as the source of knowledge and turned to a religious/philosophical community called the Manichees. C. For professional reasons, Augustine moved to Italy. 1. He heard the sermons of Bishop Ambrose of Milan, who provided Augustine with a way of reading scripture that began to make sense to him. 2. He began to understand that faith is necessary for life. 3. This led him to ask what sources, what authority, he could trust, and he began to believe that the Bible was that source, that authority. D. Augustine struggled with certain intellectual problems concerning the nature of God and the nature of evil. 1. After reading some writings of Platonists, Augustine concluded that God simply is. 2. He also determined that evil is not a substance but the turning from higher toward lower things. E. Augustine was intellectually accepting of Christianity and recognized the futility of seeking fame and fortune, but he was held back by his sexual appetite. 1. He struggled mightily to make the turn toward God. 2. He knew that for him to choose Christianity meant to renounce sex forever. F. Augustine’s conversion experience took place while reading a passage from Paul’s letter to the Romans while in a garden. VII. It is impossible even to survey the range of Augustine’s intellect and his impact on Christianity. However, let me suggest something of Augustine the teacher. A. He wrote a rule for the clergy who were attached to his church at Hippo. ©2007 The Teaching Company. 27 B. He prescribed a way of life for a group of nuns. C. He wrote an extraordinarily important work called On Christian Doctrine, which lays out how various “liberal arts” subjects are or are not useful to Christians. D. A work of Augustine known as The Teacher is probably a fairly accurate rendition of a discussion he had with his teenage son Adeodatus, who died shortly afterward. 1. This dialogue is largely about the nature of language and how words operate as signs pointing beyond themselves to the thing signified. 2. Much of this dialogue could almost be dismissed as an elaborate intellectual game or sparring match with his son. 3. Ultimately, the understanding of the relationship of sign to thing signified has a profound meaning for Christians and how we learn about things that are invisible. 4. Understanding this also teaches us what we can and cannot know. 5. Hence, Augustine is really teaching his son Adeodatus about the need for faith and what we mean by faith. 6. Words provide an occasion for learning, and their truth is established by what Augustine calls our inner teacher. 7. This dialogue shows Augustine as one of the greatest of Christian teachers.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  Scapegoating is common, and blame falls upon followers, those outside the group, a member's family, the government, Satan-anyone and everyone but themselves. The blaming may follow a ritualized procedure, such as a trial, "hot seat" denunciation, or public confession (either privately or in front of the group). Blame is a powerful reinforcer of passivity and obedience that produces guilt, shame, terror, and conformity in followers. 13. Promiscuous Sexual Behavior and InfidelityPromiscuity, child sexual abuse, multiple relationships and marriages, rape, and sexual acting out of all sorts are behaviors frequently practiced by sociopathic cult leaders. Conversely there may be stringent sexual control of followers through such tactics as enforced celibacy, arranged marriages, forced breakups and divorces, removal of children from their parents, forced abortions, and mandated births. For sociopaths, sex is primarily a control and power issue. Along with this behavior comes vast irresponsibility, not only for the followers' emotions but also for their lives. In one cult, for example, multiple sexual relations were encouraged even though one of the top leaders was known to be HIV positive. This kind of negligence toward others is not uncommon among sociopaths. Marital fidelity is rare among sociopaths. There are usually reports of countless extramarital affairs and sexual predation of adult and child members of both sexes. The sexual behavior of such a leader may be kept hidden from all but the inner circle or may be part of accepted group sexual practices. In any case, due to the power imbalance between leader and followers, sexual contact is never truly consensual and is likely to have damaging consequences for the follower. 14. Lack of Realistic Life Plan and Parasitic LifestyleThe sociopathic cult leader tends to move around a lot, making countless efforts at starting over while seeking fertile new ground to exploit. One day he may appear as a rock musician, the next as a messiah; one day a door-to-door salesman, the next as founder of a self-rejuvenation program; one day a college professor, the next as the new Lenin bringing revolution to America. The flip side of this erratic lifestyle is the all-encompassing promise for the future that the cult leader makes to his followers. Many groups claim as their goal world domination or salvation at the time of the Apocalypse. The leader is the first to proclaim the utopian nature of the group, which generally is a justification for irrational behavior and stringent controls. Often the leader's sense of entitlement is demonstrated by the contrast between his luxurious lifestyle and the impoverishment of his followers. Most cult leaders are supported by gifts and donations from their devotees, who may be pressured to turn over much of their income and worldly possessions to the group. Sympathetic outsiders and so-called fellow travelers are also prime targets for solicitations for financial contributions to support the leader. Slavery, enforced prostitution, and a variety of illegal acts for the benefit of the leader are common in a cult milieu.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  I know that she had no English because, after I sat there trying to feel whether or not anything was broken or searing me with pain - which it wasn’t, particularly since I had anesthetized myself with the bottle of scotch - I opened my car door and looked around. My car, a red Toyota Corolla, was weirdly angled and had its face smashed in. Her car, a white … I’m not sure - it looked something like those old Gremlins - her car was smashed in on the left side all the way up to the windshield. Something warm and metallic filled my mouth. I’d bitten my tongue. I saw the woman sitting on the guard rail, crying, saying things I didn’t understand. Her hair was more black than the night around us. She had a lump the size of a golf ball on her forehead. No airbag. Her skirt was white and billowed out at times. The person I hit in my head-on collision was a 5’ tall brown skinned pregnant woman who had no English. How I knew the woman carried life in her gut is that her belly had the unmistakable mound of a child. Six, possibly seven months of child mound. At the time, this did not alarm me; as I said, I had the sensitivity of a drunk. Though I did feel a prickle of something far far inside my abdomen. I sat down next to her. She began to wail and hold her belly. I said, “Are you in pain?” She did not look at me or answer. Dumbly, I put my arm around her shoulders. I have no idea why she let me do that. She rocked. Inconsolably. I didn’t feel anything. No, literally. I couldn’t feel my hands, my feet, my ass. I couldn’t feel my own face. The woman fumbled in her skirt pocket and pulled out a cell phone. I thought perhaps she was fingering 911, but she was not. I could see she was trying to dial a number. Someone she knew. Someone to help. I couldn’t manage my own cell phone. I looked at it in my hand. I couldn’t see any numbers, or how to activate the thing. It sat like a dead rodent. I noticed I smelled faintly of piss. I don’t know how long we sat there. The sound of cars whizzing by comforted me. After a while three cop cars and an ambulance showed up. I remember the sound of sirens trying to out-do one another. The cops blocked off the bit of road we were on - the overpass between north and southbound lanes. I cupped my ears with my hands. I remember the red white and blue lights flashing all around us. Something about the swirls of color looked like we were inside an underwater scene.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  No one likes to admit that they were under someone else's influence (or even duped), but until you do, you will likely persist in beating yourself up unnecessarily. This is not to imply that you didn't have personal responsibility for your actions: you did-we all do (unless a gun is held to our heads). But you were functioning under the duress of what the legal world calls "undue influence"and in some cases you may have been sold an out-and-out bill of goods. Your free will was not taken away per se, but it was certainly distorted and restricted. As for leaving, when you became strong enough to see that you could leave your cultic social system, only then could you begin to free yourself-to make that leap. Now you face the challenge of making another worldview shift, this one of your own choosing. [image file=img/img0006.jpg] When people leave a negative or harmful cultic relationship, they often struggle with the question, Why would anyone (my leader, my lover, or my teacher) do this to me? When the deception and exploitation become evident, the enormous unfairness of the victimization and abuse can be difficult to accept. Often former cult members have difficulty sorting out their experiences and tend to blame themselves. They don't immediately comprehend the vital role of the cult leader, and at times are reluctant to hold the leader responsible for certain behaviors, actions, and consequences. A cult cannot be truly explored or understood without understanding its leader. Psychologists Edward Levine and Charles Shaiova write that a cult's formation, proselytizing methods, and means of influence and control "are determined by certain salient personality characteristics of [the] cult leader.... Such individuals are authoritarian personalities who attempt to compensate for their deep, intense feelings of inferiority, insecurity, and hostility by forming cultic groups primarily to attract those whom they can psychologically coerce into and keep in a passive-submissive state, and secondarily to use them to increase their income [status, or other gain]."' In examining the motives and activities of cult leaders, it is painfully obvious that cult life is rarely pleasant for devotees because the power imbalance in cults breeds injustices and abuses of all sorts. As a defense against the heightened anxiety that accompanies such powerlessness, many people in cults and abusive relationships assume a stance of self-blame. Typically this self-deprecating attitude is reinforced by the group's self-serving message that the followers are never good enough and are to blame for everything that goes wrong. Demystifying the cult leader's power is an important part of the psychoeducational recovery process. This examination of power is critical to truly gaining freedom and independence from the leader's control. The process starts with some basic questions: Who was this person who claimed to be God, omniscient, all powerful? What did he get out of this masquerade? What was the real purpose of the group (or relationship)?

• From Real Sex for Real Women (2008)

  Realize that what is real is the relationship you have with your partner—warts, roses, and all. If you want to get your relationship back on track, you need to put in some time and effort to make this happen. Consider counseling as you and your partner work on strengthening your relationship. Picking up the piecesMany people consider cheating an absolute deal breaker, but in some relationships, healing is possible. Couples’ counseling is a good idea when healing. A therapist can help couples rebuild their relationship and reconnect sexually with each other, and can also help people discover why the infidelity occurred in the first place. But to go about healing this massive wound, the injured partner will need time to vent about the way he or she feels. Couples often have a hard time bouncing back from an affair because the betrayed partner can’t let go of the pain and the guilty partner feels helpless to fix the situation. To help begin the healing process, the betrayed partner should be able to vent about his or her anger and sadness for 10 minutes a day. After the 10 minutes is up, the affair should not be discussed for the rest of the day. This will help to prevent the affair from becoming the focus of the relationship. The cheating partner will have to be honest without being hurtful if the relationship is to make it through this period. When discussing the affair, the betrayed partner is likely to have many questions. The guilty partner should offer truthful answers, but avoid any intimate details about the other woman or man as it will only further upset their partner. Honesty is a must when rebuilding a relationship after an affair—but so is tactfulness. Know your limitsEmail, instant messaging, texts, and social networks blur the line when it comes to adultery. Sending your colleague a suggestive text or email seems harmless, but it is a form of cheating. Don’t write anything in an email, blog, or text that you wouldn’t say in front of your partner. At home, avoid spending hours in front of the computer when you should be with your partner. If it feels wrong, it probably is. [image file=image_rsrc3AR.jpg] Connecting with your RelationshipAll relationships take work, so it makes sense that the most important relationship in your life should require the most work and commitment. “Happily ever after” is the stuff of fairy tales, but deep, lasting love is possible. It just takes effort, communication, and dedication. Luckily, the payoff is huge—a happy life, a fulfilling relationship, and unconditional love. However, it helps to know how to bypass the roadblocks, keep your love life exciting, and navigate the trials and triumphs of monogamy.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  I went out into the lobby and sat down next to a woman on a couch and smelled the collar of her coat deeply. At first I thought it smelled like pickles, and then I realized that it smelled like cigarette smoke, and I was very surprised to think that pickles and cigarette smoke were allied smells. (Is that what people mean by a “sour” smell?) Then I went back upstairs and pinched my lip again the same way I had, a little to the right of center, until it hurt a lot, to turn the Barclay Hotel and the rest of the planet back on, and I went to sleep. I still feel bad about stealing those shrimp—not only because of the theft, but because the kitchen helper may to this day be troubled by that bit of strangeness all those years ago, when he had held one in each hand and had them suddenly disappear. There—that was a typical early Drop. I know that I could probably make much better use of my gift than I do. For me it is just a sexual aid. Others might put it to fuller avaricious or intellectual use: government secrets, technological espionage, etc. Surely over the centuries a few individuals have developed this ability and used it to consolidate power or to liquidate enemies. J. S. Bach, for instance, could not have cranked out a cantata a week without some sort of temporal trickery: he was probably seventy-five when he died, not sixty-five, but he had borrowed the last decade of his life and used it up piecemeal in earlier Drops. I was reading Cardano’s autobiography not long ago, to see how one is supposed to write one’s autobiography (it’s harder than I thought!), and I had a suspicion at one point that he had discovered a way into the Fold, but was not going to reveal that fact to us. Something he said about preferring solitude is what alerted me. He said, “I question the right of anyone to waste our time. The wasting of time is an abomination.” In my place, some would toggle time and cheat on their Ph.D. orals or simply take money from open cash registers. Cheating and stealing don’t tempt me, though. Or maybe I just think it is wrong to cheat and steal and so don’t do it. When I was desperate for money a few years ago and I found a way to drop into the Fold by writing a certain mathematical formula on a scrap of paper, I gave serious thought to walking around the city stealing one dollar from every open cash register.

• From Wild (2012)

  My mom had been dead a week when I kissed another man. And another a week after that. I only made out with them and the others that followed—vowing not to cross a sexual line that held some meaning to me—but still I knew I was wrong to cheat and lie. I felt trapped by my own inability to either leave Paul or stay true, so I waited for him to leave me, to go off to graduate school alone, though of course he refused. He deferred his admission for a year and we stayed in Minnesota so I could be near my family, though my nearness in the year that followed my mother’s death accomplished little. It turned out I wasn’t able to keep my family together. I wasn’t my mom. It was only after her death that I realized who she was: the apparently magical force at the center of our family who’d kept us all invisibly spinning in the powerful orbit around her. Without her, Eddie slowly became a stranger. Leif and Karen and I drifted into our own lives. Hard as I fought for it to be otherwise, finally I had to admit it too: without my mother, we weren’t what we’d been; we were four people floating separately among the flotsam of our grief, connected by only the thinnest rope. I never did make that Thanksgiving dinner. By the time Thanksgiving rolled around eight months after my mom died, my family was something I spoke of in the past tense. So when Paul and I finally moved to New York City a year after we had originally intended to, I was happy to go. There, I could have a fresh start. I would stop messing around with men. I would stop grieving so fiercely. I would stop raging over the family I used to have. I would be a writer who lived in New York City. I would walk around wearing cool boots and an adorable knitted hat. It didn’t go that way. I was who I was: the same woman who pulsed beneath the bruise of her old life, only now I was somewhere else.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  I threw away their letters without reading them and refused to take their phone calls. I simply couldn't handle the psychological torment, so I shut down on them. I kept running for the next few years; however, it was within the only context I knew-from one offshoot group to the next. I traveled all over the West Coast, staying with different groups until I contracted what I've since come to believe was bacterial meningitis. I had fevers over 105 degrees, but was never taken to a medical doctor. When my parents learned of my illness, my father came to get me. I was too weak to protest, and so went back with him. When my mother arrived at the airport to pick us up, I noticed that her hair had turned gray, and to this day, I remember the intense feeling of guilt that I had caused it. I lived with my parents for the next few years, along with Bob. They kept pushing me to marry him, he kept pursuing me, and I kept saying no. During this time, I knew that I wanted to go to college and get a degree, although I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. However, I was unable to get emotional or financial support from my parents, so when I could afford it, I took occasional courses through correspondence or at community colleges. It took me eight years to finish my Bachelor of Science degree, and then another four to complete my law degree-twelve difficult years of solitary struggle for the education most children assume by right. This was the time when my heretofore-strong faith in God was finally shattered. I remember lying in bed, praying and begging to God to rescue me from Bob and from my mother. I would read and study my Bible by the hour in a vain attempt to figure out God's plan for me. I never received any help or rescue from God or anyone else in all the years I begged for it. My parents spent years telling me that God would only be happy with me if I submitted myself to them and did what they told me to do. The church routinely reiterated this theoryentire sermons were preached on honoringyour parents and obeyingthem without question. I remember being extremely bitter and thinking that parents are supposed to protect their children from harm, not purposely try to harm them. Listening to them and their preachers liken God to a parent who cares for his children just sickened me. My faith shattered, and I began to withdraw emotionally and mentally from the church and its dogmas. I went through the motions for a couple of years more, but my heart and faith were no longer present. I finally finished walking away from the cult in 1993, and have not attended any church since that time.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  To be forced to abuse others further compounds the guilt and trauma. Margaret Singer once remarked that it is an "intellectual mistake" to equate sexual abuse found in cults with the sexual abuse in outside society. Sexual abuse in society is more random, furtive, and associated with guilt, while the sexual abuse found in cults may be an integral, open, and accepted part of the sys- tem.20 Naturally this influences a former member's recovery issues and process. If you are just leaving a group or relationship where you were physically or sexually abused, consider the following suggestions: Find a safe place to stay with your family, a trusted friend, or in a shelter. • If necessary, seek the safety of a battered women's shelter. Almost every city has nonprofit homes or residences where women and children in danger can find refuge. Sometimes these shelters are able to network with social service agencies that provide counseling, which will enable you to start planning for your postcult life. • Seek medical attention for any physical wounds or injuries, even old ones. • If necessary, go to or call a rape crisis center or the police. If you have been abused or threatened, you may be able to file criminal charges or obtain a restraining order to prohibit contact by the group, its members, or your former abuser. • Refer to the list of resources in Appendix C. Some will be more helpful than others, but many provide referrals. Finding the appropriate help for your particular needs is key. Don't give up! In addition to getting immediate assistance, there are other things you can do. First of all, talk about the violence with someone you trust. This will help you process and work though your emotions. Finding someone with a similar history, or a therapist knowledgeable about cults, will be most helpful. Expressing the emotions you have about the sexual abuse or other violence may also help you recover. Art, music, writing, poetry, dance, and drama-all forms of personal creativity can serve as a release and a means of healing. Reading about theories on violence and abuse can help increase your understanding of victims and perpetrators. Books such as Trauma and Recovery by Judith Lewis Herman (Basic Books), Sex in the Forbidden Zone by Peter Rutter (Fawcett), and The Nazi Doctors by Robert Jay Lifton (Basic Books) may provide you with insight and self-understanding. Another useful book is Women, Sex, and Addiction by Charlotte Kasl (Perennial Currents). You may also find that attending a support group is beneficial to your healing process. In cases where alcohol or substance abuse was or is a problem, attending meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous may help. However, we caution you to proceed into the 12-step world with your eyes open and your antennae up. Despite its successes, this is an area rife with abuses and incompetencies. Hustlers use 12-step programs as a hunting ground for income and glory.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  The coolness of the open air on my richard made it remember how good it was to be hard. I lay next to her on the bed, looking at her slung-forward drones and flushed face, and I imagined her imagining sucking her piano teacher’s languid elutriator, or thinking about somebody or -bodies a great deal sexier to her than I was doing something nice and kinky, and in my anxiousness to catch up with her I almost went too far and came all alone—I clenched once in a false-dawn sort of pre-orgasm, which is a spasm (if I may be pardoned for an inelegant simile) very similar to the false flush-moment that can occur in a toilet tank if you don’t hold the handle down quite long enough for the mechanism to confirm your unambivalent wish for it to go through a full flush cycle. I let my cock settle down for a minute, and then began driving up the grade again. It was now so mindlessly hard that the sensation of a pinchingly new condom being unrolled down its length was a matter of complete indifference to it. I pointed myself back inside Rhody and pressed the rocker-switch and, slapping against her as if there had been no break in the action, came just when she did. I felt a little guilty about having thus engineered a simultaneous orgasm (and what if by some mischance she found the second condom later?) and I lay there in the otherwise happy post-coital calm, seriously weighing whether I should just go ahead and tell her my entire history of time-perversion. “What do you have in your hand?” she asked, undoing my fingers. “This thing? It’s just a sort of charm.” She looked at the burned-out rocker-switch, which I stupidly hadn’t gotten rid of during our orgasm. “You were holding on to this the whole time?” she said, looking at me uncomprehendingly. “I don’t think the whole time,” I said. “Where did it come from? I don’t understand.” “Well,” I said, playing for time, “it’s just that—I remembered I had a bunch of rocker-switches in my pants pocket and grabbed one when I was going at you from behind. That was great , by the way.” I needed twenty minutes or so to think about how I should answer her, and whether I should tell her about the Fold, but I couldn’t very well reach for another rocker-switch while she lay on her side, propped on one elbow, looking at me with such a troubled expression. I had to go with my flash assessment, which was that this was not in fact the time to tell her about my Fold-life after all.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  Phillip came from a big ass southern Baptist Christian family, all of whom sang. So there were a great many family Christian hymn sing-alongs on family front porches with family harmony rising and falling in their voices. And his father was the voice of god once removed, and his older brother was the voice of god twice removed, and the other three people besides Phillip were sisters, so that third removed god voice fell upon his slender shoulders. I mean how many goddamn times can you sing “I’ll Fly Away” or the dreaded “Amazing Grace?” No wonder he was so tired. And here’s why the micromovements of a girl woman’s sexual history matters. Phillip’s older brother had already been through the reject god, leave home, become a pot smoking musician, have a family, return to the fold and take on the man mantle chapters. But Phillip had just hit the reject god, leave home, become a pot smoking artist and carry around a guilt bigger than Texas. He was the outcast son, unable to join the hymns on the porch. And me, it was a secret shame I was carrying. When Phillip wanted hand jobs instead of fucking and I couldn’t do it and I couldn’t do it and I couldn’t do it, and when I wanted to suck his cock and he wouldn’t let me wouldn’t let me wouldn’t let me, we met our wounds in each other’s bodies. Guilt in the form of a beautiful gentle man and shame in the form of an angry girl became our sexuality. The night he finally let me put my mouth on him we were listening to “Comfortably Numb,” which he’d played himself first until we got too high. In my mouth his cock made me feel forgiven. I don’t know why. But once I’d turned him, he went anywhere I asked him to go with me. There we were that night breaking up in the snow. A still shot of drunken rage looking down on gentle beauty. Well, I went a little wacko, which used to happen a lot back then, and I started a fight with him. I don’t know why. I remember looking at the top of his head and thinking look, it’s an angel, and my very next thought was, spit on his head. I told you, I don’t know why. Why did I eat paper as I kid when I was scared? My panties were sopping and my head was spinning and it was cold and hot at the same time and it was so beautiful there in the snow and flat and quiet and music.

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  Practicing the Lord’s Prayer Give us today our daily bread. What is worrying me right now?What are my urgent physical or financial needs?What needs do I have in my family or friendships?Are there things I should be doing with regard to my needs, knowing that God is working on my behalf?“FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS” The next line says, “and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” Debts doesn’t literally mean money owed us. It means anything someone has done to hurt or offend us. We talked about this earlier when we looked at prayers that are a waste of time. If we are full of bitterness or offense, God wants us to resolve that, not ignore it. Living in peace with our brothers and sisters is high on His priority list. If we’re honest with ourselves, we know that we need God’s grace. We know where we’ve messed up, even if others don’t. That’s why we have the gospel. The word gospel literally means “good news,” and the good news is that God does not hold our failures, sins, mistakes, or weaknesses against us. He’s wiped the slate clean. Of course, after God wipes that slate clean, we often scribble all over it again. We covet, or hate, or lust, or lie, or lose our tempers in traffic, or yell at the dog, or drink decaffeinated coffee, or whatever. And God forgives that too. He doesn’t hold it against us. He doesn’t take a screenshot of our sin before deleting it just in case He needs to refer to it later. He forgives us. Wonderful, right? And then He asks us to treat others with that same love. Ouch. I’m a much happier recipient of forgiveness than I am a giver of it. But God doesn’t pull any punches in this area. He expects us to forgive those who sin against us. This isn’t so they get off the hook. It isn’t so they can continue to hurt others. It isn’t because you don’t matter, or because you deserved what they did to you. All of those ideas are completely false. (Again, see chapter 13. This topic is one that Christians sometimes get wrong, and that can lead to tolerating abusive situations.) Forgiveness is defined by psychologists as a conscious choice to release feelings of resentment or vengeance toward someone who has hurt you, regardless of whether they deserve forgiveness.1 Forgiveness is for you. When you release the person who hurt you, you relinquish their control over your heart, your thoughts, your emotions, your present, and your future. You acknowledge the offense and the pain it caused, but you refuse to allow that to dictate the rest of your life. There is freedom in forgiveness. Who do you need to forgive? That’s a tough question, and I can’t answer it for you. It’s one you need to ask yourself, though.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  It becomes more complicated, though, when that love is an illicit one and when there are many moral and ethical components to it. Like most people, therapists can have many feelings about that kind of love; they can have a moral conflict, feel guilty, or identify with the betrayed partner; they can feel envious of the patient who is able to do something they themselves may want to do; they might want to make the patient a “better person” and help him or her end the affair; they may even have a romantic fantasy about the patient running away with her lover. I sit with that complexity as I listen to Eve, aware that the search for truth is always painful. It forces us to slow down and examine our lives, to replace action with reflection. What is the real meaning of an affair? Can Eve tolerate knowing the forces behind her infidelity? Can she bear recognizing the pain she carries from childhood and that her affair promises to soothe? Can she identify the ways her mother and grandmother both live in her love affair? Will she be able to survive? EVE ARRIVES FIVE minutes late to our next session. “I woke up late and hardly made it here,” she says as she walks in. “There was so much traffic and I couldn’t find parking. I thought, ‘I need a miracle to make it.’” I listen to her and wonder if she wishes she hadn’t made it to my office so she wouldn’t have to start the painful process of self-reflection. But I also hear her surprise about the fact that she actually made it, not just to our session, but maybe also to her life. “It might be surprising to you that you made it to where you are—becoming a functioning adult with a successful career, with a loving husband and two children—maybe it seems like a miracle,” I say. She smiles. “Sometimes I’m not really sure how that happened. I can’t believe that this is actually my life. I know it might sound superficial, but even the way I look surprises me sometimes,” she says. “I was an ugly little girl, ‘strange-looking,’ as my parents used to say.” She looks at me and adds, “But the truth is that now I don’t know anything anymore. I feel like I’m turning myself back into the girl I used to be, the girl who had nothing and no one. I feel that I destroyed everything that I created and that I won’t have a second chance. This time I won’t make it.” Eve doesn’t remember much from her childhood.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  Eve takes a breath, as if she is trying to calm herself, and then adds with a smile, “Josh thinks SoulCycle can make money from selling an ‘alibi package,’ where people can buy false memberships at a discount price.” I smile back, even as I know that none of this is funny. There is so much confusion, guilt, and fear in her witty way of telling me things. Suddenly she is fully present and I feel the intensity of her pain. She is alive, I think, and I wonder out loud if she wants to say more about her love affair. During our first session Eve told me that she was married and had two children. Her daughter had just turned twelve and her son was nine. She told me she had decided to start therapy because something terrible had happened, something that made her realize she needed help. Then she told me about Josh. Eve spends a few evenings a week in Josh’s office. Josh is a creature of habit and they have a routine: first they have sex, then they order food, and when they have finished eating he drives her home . Eve tells me about their sex, first hesitantly and then in detail. “With Josh, nothing is in my control,” she says, looking to see if I understand what she means. She explains that in her submission to him she feels held. She feels that he knows everything about her and about her body, and that she can lose control under his domination. “He brings me back to life, do you know what I mean?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. Life and death, from the start, are strong forces in Eve’s narrative. We begin exploring the links between sex, death and reparation, and the uncanny ways these are related to Eve’s family history. Her mother, I learn, had lost her own mother to cancer when she was fourteen years old. For two years Eve’s mother took care of her dying mother but a part of her died with her. Eve and I will slowly realize how through sexual submission she gets in touch with her longing to be taken care of, to stay alive and to repair a traumatic past. Eve looks at her watch and starts putting on her shoes, preparing for the end of the session. Then she leans back and says quietly: “When we are done and Josh drives me home, I become emotional. I love having sex with him and I love when he drives me.” There is another moment of silence, and she says, almost whispering, “I look at him holding the steering wheel, a serious look on his face, and I think that he is the most handsome man I have ever met.