Tag Archives: shunning

family, mental health, music, psychology

“It may be no big deal to you, but it’s a very big deal to me…”

Back in 2007, when Bill and I were about to move to Germany the first time, I picked up Lyle Lovett’s then new album, It’s Not Big, It’s Large. That album had a great song on it called “No Big Deal”. Although I haven’t listened to that great album recently, I am reminded of Lyle’s song, “No Big Deal”, as I write today’s post. Below are the lyrics, written by Mr. Lovett himself…

It’s Sunday morning, the club is on
That great cat’s still yawning
Because Saturday is gone

And I still feel the feeling
Of how you felt upon me
And it may be no big deal to you
But it’s a very big deal to me

You were down and dirty
And he was tall and twenty nine
And I’m only disconcerted
Because you said you knew I wouldn’t mind

But I still feel the feeling
Of how you telephone me
And it may be no big deal to you
But it’s a very big deal to me

But you can’t make a cool cat crazy
Like you can’t make a gray cat brown
And you can′t keep a wild cat
When she knows the wildest cat’s in town

So it′s Sunday morning
Yeah and I guess I had a coffee
Ooh ’cause I start recalling
A time I went astray

And I still feel the feeling
Of her last words of warning
She said, “Man, it may be no big deal to you
But it’s a very big deal to me.”

She said, “Man, it may be no big deal to you
But it’s a very big deal to me.”

Lyle says this is a morning song…

Lyle says he wrote this song years ago, while crashing on his friend Robert Keen’s couch in Nashville. I’m assuming he means Robert Earl Keen, the great songwriter. They’re about the same age. Anyway, Lyle is an earlier riser than Robert is, and he had this song in his head. I have a feeling someone in particular inspired it. Maybe Lyle was hurt by someone he thought was a better friend or lover to him than she actually was. And maybe he’s hurt someone who loved and trusted him, only to be betrayed.

This morning, I saw yet another AITA (Am I The Asshole) post that inspired me. This time, it was about two brothers who are no longer on speaking terms. Granted, I understand that a lot of these posts are made up, but I think this one is very plausible, because I hear about people doing this kind of shit all the time. Have a look:

This is a story about two brothers. Five years ago, the original poster (OP) had a girlfriend of three years. His older brother, Kevin, had an affair with her. The original poster found out about the betrayal and was very upset. He broke up with his girlfriend and moved back into his parents’ home. The post doesn’t mention if the two brothers were sharing a place, but my guess is that they must have been living together. Why else would the OP move?

The OP showed the proof of the affair to his parents, obviously expecting them to take his side. But, after a month, the parents started pressuring the OP to make amends with Kevin, who had started coming over to their house to apologize. The OP, still hurt and angry, rebuffed his brother, and was even more hurt and angry when their parents and his ex girlfriend tried to pressure him into getting over his pain on their timeline, and on their terms. The end result was that the OP decided to go “no contact” with his brother and his parents. Fair enough.

The OP stayed in touch with a cousin, who was keeping him apprised of his grandmother’s fragile health. She got very sick and was in the hospital, so the OP went to visit her. He ran into his brother, Kevin, at the hospital. Kevin tried to speak to him, and the OP acted like his formerly close older brother didn’t exist. The end result is that Kevin got so upset that he tried to overdose on pills.

Naturally, their parents were very concerned and they begged the OP to forgive Kevin, which he refused to do. The OP’s parents said they missed their family unit and desperately wanted their sons to reconcile. The OP claims he doesn’t care about them anymore, even though despite having gone “no contact”, he gets his parents’ messages to him. Then he asked if he was the asshole.

I was pretty triggered by this post.

(skip this if you’re only interested in the AITA post)…

Those of you who know me, might know that Bill has two daughters. For many years, both of them, plus his former stepson, were very estranged. When they were children, this estrangement was 100 percent Ex’s doing. She refused to let them have contact with Bill, because he dared to accept her divorce proposal. For this transgression, she believed he should lose everything, including his daughters and his parents.

Back in 2006, when older daughter was about 15 years old and younger daughter was 12, they wrote letters disowning Bill. The letters were obviously coached, and younger daughter later confirmed it. She said her mother stood over them and made them hand write the letters that she dictated. Then she photocopied the letters and sent them to Bill, along with adoption papers and several boxes of Bill’s belongings. All of this arrived just in time for Bill’s 42nd birthday.

I distinctly remember that older daughter demanded that Bill sign adoption papers so that #3 could adopt her and her sister. She explained that she wanted an “everyday daddy”, and warned that if Bill didn’t do as she demanded, she would never speak to him again. Both girls also addressed their natural father– the man who changed most of their diapers, took care of them when they were very young, and paid pretty much all of their bills– by his first name.

Seventeen years later, older daughter has been as good as her word. She doesn’t speak to Bill at all. Both she and younger daughter changed their surnames– again, at Ex’s behest. They probably got adopted, too, once younger daughter turned 18.

Younger daughter eventually came around and now she and Bill talk all the time. Bill hasn’t yet worked up the nerve to ask her if she’s been legally adopted. However, clearly, younger daughter thinks of Bill as her father, even if she is legally one of #3’s heirs. As for older daughter, who knows? She refuses to have anything to do with Bill.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I heard that when Bill’s father died in November 2020–older daughter’s beloved “Papa”– older daughter felt entitled to attend his funeral. She and Ex, who had hatched all this toxic bullshit in the first place, were sitting at their home, grieving over Bill’s father’s death, thinking they had a claim to publicly mourn him at the funeral. They wondered “what it would be” for them to get to attend the funeral.

Uh…FIL was in their lives because of Bill, who was his only son. Older daughter disowned Bill, changed her name, and probably got legally adopted. What the hell right does she have thinking she’s still in Bill’s family? Her paternal grandparents are now #3’s parents, not Bill’s parents. She voluntarily opted out of the family when she decided to disown her natural father. If she got adopted, then legally, the most she is to Bill’s family is a friend. That doesn’t automatically entitle her to be at family events, like funerals. Getting legally adopted by your mother’s third husband is a very serious thing, and it has very serious consequences.

As it turned out, my father-in-law’s funeral wasn’t well attended by anyone, because it happened during the worst of the pandemic. Not even Bill could attend his dad’s funeral, due to the lockdowns and travel restrictions. I’m pretty sure Bill’s awesome sister pretty much put the kibosh on Ex and older daughter being there, anyway.

Younger daughter told us that she tried to reason with her sister and said, “Why would you assume you’d be welcome at the funeral after the hostile way you’ve behaved toward them? You haven’t had a real relationship with them in years.”

But then in the spring of 2022, Ex showed up at Bill’s stepmother’s house in Tennessee with older daughter and her daughter with #3. SMIL, still grieving and lonely, welcomed them into her house. During that visit, Ex asked SMIL for money, and proposed that she move in with Ex up in New Hampshire. When SMIL demurred, Ex gave her some boxes and said she could use them to pack up anything she wanted to “pass down”.

Um… excuse me? YOU ARE NOT IN BILL’S FAMILY ANYMORE, EX. And that is 100 percent YOUR doing. Older daughter followed your lead, so she’s not in the family, either. She’s a 32 year old woman who is apparently smart enough to be in graduate school, studying in a mental health field, of all things. She’s old enough and intelligent enough to understand that when you go no contact and do extreme things like disowning people, changing your name, and getting adopted, the sword can cut both ways. You don’t get to dictate how people react when you take extreme measures against them. And no, you aren’t entitled to an inheritance– especially from the family you threw away!

Please don’t misunderstand me…

It’s not that I don’t think people have the right to go no contact, particularly if it means protecting their mental health. I absolutely agree that sometimes going no contact can be the healthiest thing a person can do. But if you’re going to go no contact for your health, I think you should really commit to it. That means that you don’t contact people who are close to those you’re ostracizing.

If older daughter is happier and healthier being #3’s daughter, so be it. But she has no business trying to connect with Bill’s family, if that’s really how she feels. That’s still Bill’s family, and he was there first. She was in that family in the first place because of Bill. Bill is the one who made “Papa” her grandfather. Moreover, cutting Bill off because he agreed to divorce a toxic, abusive, narcissist who actually PROPOSED the divorce in the in-laws’ home on Easter, does NOT make him the asshole!

Bill would love to talk to older daughter, and I would never try to stop him from doing so. But frankly, I wouldn’t blame him if he decided to counter going no contact with her. Keep in mind, though, that I’ve never been a parent, so I honestly don’t know what parental love and devotion feels like. I also have a much lower tolerance for abuse than Bill does.

Of course, the way I think “no contact” should work isn’t how it ends up working for a lot of people. Humans are complicated, and the majority of us form relationships with other people. Sometimes you can cut someone off completely and there won’t be any messiness. But when it’s a family member and you have any kind of connection with other family members, things can get very complicated in a hurry. Not everyone is going to agree with you that going “no contact” is the right approach, and they won’t all take your side and share in your extreme decision.

If you still have a connection with those people, you will continue to have a connection to the person with whom you’re trying to go no contact. So really, what you have is more of a toxic “low contact” scenario, which personally, I don’t think works very well. If you feel so negative about someone that they need to be completely cut out of your life, but then you hang around their relatives, you WILL still be in contact with them.

I think Ex is okay with that. She never lets anyone go, and never intended to leave Bill’s family or their marriage. She doesn’t want to be no contact with him, although she’d never lower herself to sincerely apologize for ALL of the things she did (Bill takes full responsibility for his part). She thinks his family is still her family, just as she thinks what belongs to other people belongs to her.

That’s why she felt entitled to invite herself–and US— to Bill’s dad’s house for Christmas, back in 2004. If I were to drop dead tomorrow and she heard about it, I bet she’d try to hoover Bill. She’d be quite shameless about it. I’ve seen her in action. She thinks he’s weak, and the only reason she can’t have him is because I control him. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Back to the post in question…

Based on the original post that prompted this entry, I get the sense that the “no contact” decision is fairly new (five years can pass in a flash, once you’re over 21). The OP has only fairly recently cut off his family. He has every right to be pissed at Kevin and his ex girlfriend. What they did was very hurtful. He also has a right to be angry about what happened with his parents, if that’s how he feels.

However, I also think the OP is being pretty self-centered. His parents weren’t the ones who slept with his girlfriend. Kevin is their son, too. Obviously, Kevin has mental health issues of some sort, which means they believe he needs their support, even if he’s “toxic”.

I don’t know if the suicidal gesture was a genuine attempt, or if it was just Kevin trying to be manipulative. While I think any suicide attempt should be taken very seriously, I also notice that Kevin used a less lethal method of making his attempt.

It sounds really morbid, and I’m sorry for that, but men have a tendency to use more violent means when they attempt suicide. Statistics show that women are more likely to attempt suicide, but men are more likely to die from suicide. While people absolutely do die of overdoses, it usually takes some time for that to happen… time that would allow them to be discovered and taken to a hospital. Based on the AITA post, that’s what happened in Kevin’s case.

It’s certainly not the OP’s fault that Kevin overdosed. He’s not responsible for Kevin’s mental health or lack thereof. Not knowing the people involved, I can’t tell if this behavior is one of a long string of issues that made the OP finally decide he was done, or if this behavior is new. Sleeping with your brother’s girlfriend is pretty toxic stuff, although obviously, the girlfriend shares the blame in that decision. Maybe the OP dodged a bullet, thanks to his brother. Good that he didn’t marry the girlfriend. She probably would have been unfaithful.

It sounds like the overdose was, perhaps, Kevin’s way of forcing the OP to “rock bottom”– as a means of showing him what he was “throwing away”. That was another one of Ex’s tactics… and it was very shitty, manipulative, and totally disrespectful. She did it to Bill (not through a suicide attempt, but through deliberately causing huge problems), and later, she did it to younger daughter (that time it was an overdose– “suicide attempt”).

The concept of “rock bottom”, by the way, isn’t about causing catastrophic problems for the target. It’s about forcing them to deal with their “bad” behaviors without enabling them. So, if the OP or Bill were drug addicts, for instance, their friends and loved ones wouldn’t give them a place to stay, buy them food or clothes, or bail them out of jail. That would be helping them to reach “rock bottom”, where they might finally realize things are so bad that they have to change their lifestyles. Feigned suicide attempts and trying to get the family to ostracize or pressure the target are not what “rock bottom” is about. That’s just toxic manipulation.

The part I think the OP is missing is that his parents are stuck in the middle of this mess. They just want peace and harmony, and it’s hard to take sides, especially when it means choosing between sons. The OP is punishing his parents for loving Kevin, which is only the natural thing for normal parents to do. He’s their child, just as the OP is. It’s not fair to put them in a loyalty bind. In fact, the parents should stay out of this, as it’s not really their business. Moreover, the parents did let the OP move in with them, even though he was a grown man when this happened. He repaid them by demanding that they take his side in a situation that should have stayed between the actual people involved.

OP certainly has a right to his feelings and his responses to those feelings. However, he should realize that other people also have rights to their feelings and responses. If the OP wants to go no contact, that’s fair enough. But he shouldn’t be upset when he runs into his brother and parents, if he’s also going to stay in contact with cousins, grandparents, and other people in the family. That’s going to happen, particularly at family events like weddings and funerals or visiting someone in the hospital.

If the OP wants to go no contact for his mental health, he needs to be “all in” and really go no contact. Otherwise, he’s just as manipulative and toxic as they are, and this is just about him being vindictive and punishing his brother and his parents. Personally, I think it’s pretty sad to throw away a brother and two parents over a cheating girlfriend… but maybe it’s part of a larger pattern, in which case going no contact makes a lot more sense. If OP had been married to the woman, that would be more serious, in my view.

My verdict on this situation? Everyone sucks here. They all sound like they need to grow up. Unfortunately, in these kinds of family messes, ultimately fixing the issue usually isn’t up to just one person who suddenly decides to be mature. A group effort is necessary. On the other hand, someone does have to take the first step. I would hope it would be taken in a healthy way, and not in a manipulative, dramatic, dangerous way, like overdosing or staging “interventions” that blame the victim.

What Kevin and the girlfriend did may not have been a big deal to them, but it was a very big deal to the original poster. He’s not wrong to be angry about it… but he might want to reconsider if shitcanning his whole family is really the best response. Because if he really wants to be no contact, that’s what it’s going to take.

On a side note… when I typed in “men suicide attempts”, Google wanted my location.

Standard
LDS, religion

Repost: “Liberal Mormons”

Here’s a repost from March 22, 2018. I don’t have a particular reason to bust on the Mormons today, but I felt this post might be helpful for someone out there. Religious abuse in families is a thing, and the photos in those prove it.

Yesterday, someone shared an article about the practice of shunning within the Jehovah’s Witnesses.  I got sucked into a discussion about it in the Duggar group I’m in.  There were a few folks saying that shunning doesn’t happen in the JWs, the Mormons, and other religious groups where shunning is supposedly rampant.  I was reminded of a couple of documents Mormon parents gave to their wayward children and helpfully shared them with the group.  If you read this blog regularly, you might have already seen these.  I am reposting them for the curious.

These are examples of “rules” given to LDS kids whose parents are worried about their apostasy.  

I was actually surprised it took as long as it did, but several hours after I posted these, a so-called “liberal” Mormon spoke up to tell us that these letters don’t represent the norm in LDS families.  She was careful to explain that she’s liberal and liberal Mormons exist… and church members, as a whole, aren’t really as “weird” as these letters make them sound.

Actually, when I originally posted these letters, I was careful to mention that not all Mormon families do this.  There are millions of people in the LDS church and many of them are perfectly good folks.  However, it’s disingenuous to say that shunning doesn’t occur in Mormonism.  It does.  It may not happen in your family or your friends’ families, but it happens in other families.  By the way… it also happens among families in other strict religions that require family involvement, which I also pointed out.

These examples happen to be from Mormon families because I spend a lot of time following stories related to Mormonism.  The LDS church has affected my husband personally.  I would imagine that if Bill’s ex wife had been a Jehovah’s Witness convert, I would be following that faith more carefully.  I do a lot of reading about the JWs anyway, because one of my cousins was a JW for awhile.  He and his family left the church because the local leaders wanted to put a child molester in charge (or so that was the official explanation as to why they left).  

The point is, shunning is a thing and it happens a lot in religious circles.  It has two purposes.  One, is to punish anyone who goes astray.  The other purpose is to warn anyone within the group who is thinking about going astray.  If you leave the toxic group, you will be ostracized.  You’ll lose people who are important to you.  Your support system will fall apart.  These kinds of groups, by design, separate their members from other people in society, labeling them as “bad influences”.  At first, the intimate nature of the group seems close, loving, and maybe even special.  After awhile, when the group becomes toxic, that intimacy becomes a powerful incentive to stay invested.  By the time a lot of people decide to leave, the people in the group are all they have.  Leaving means striking out alone, and that’s too scary for many group members to consider.  So they continue to toe the line.

Here’s another point I’d make to “liberal” Mormons who don’t like it when these kinds of threatening letters put shade on their religious beliefs.  If you’re in a group designed to “bash” fundamentalist Christians like the Duggars, shouldn’t you expect that people might discuss other, less mainstream religions?  Although many mainstream Mormons have been trying to be “normal” for a long time, the fact is, the Mormon leadership actually pride church members for being “peculiar”.  

Russell M. Nelson explains “peculiar”…

Another thing I noticed when I posted these letters is that at least one person felt these “rules” were perfectly fine.  In the second group of photos, it sounds like the parent may be confronting his son for doing “illegal” or inappropriate things.  I think it’s important to mention that many Mormons think that people who leave the church will immediately fall into illegal or immoral behavior without the strict church teachings to keep them in line.  Many Mormons, who have no experience with things like alcohol, marijuana, or even sex outside of marriage, assume that people who drink, smoke weed, or have sex do so to excess.  That’s not necessarily so.  

I know some people get upset when I share things like this.  However, I did get one private message from someone yesterday who thanked me.  She is an ex Mormon and she gets it.  I’m sorry if some people are offended because they feel “attacked” by critical posts about their religion.  I say, if it doesn’t apply to you, you probably shouldn’t take heed.  Or maybe you should…  But there is a reason why church members are discouraged from reading “anti” Mormon literature.  It’s because the leaders know that criticism is a threat to their members’ testimonies… and when members lose their testimonies, they leave.  That means less money and power for the church as a whole.  Think about it.

Standard
family, rants

This letter in Carolyn Hax’s column really hits home…

This post has brought out some of my deeply ingrained, still raw anger toward Ex. It comes out in this post, and there is profanity… Proceed with caution. And please, if any readers feel compelled to lecture me about how inappropriate my anger is, do me a favor and buzz off. My anger is perfectly reasonable and justified, and I can write about it on my blog if I want to. That’s what blogs are for.

As some readers know, I like to read advice columns. One column I read fairly regularly is Carolyn Hax’s. I think she’s very sensible and gives good advice. A recent letter in The Washington Post gave me pause. Here it is.

“Dear Carolyn: We never spent time with my dad’s extended family, but one of his siblings and I have a lot of similar interests. I emailed her once to ask something, and we now exchange emails regularly. We haven’t spoken since I was a teen and I’m in my 30s now.

My parents are Not Pleased. My mom is actually really upset that I am talking with her; in high school she made me stop talking to her completely. My father just tells me she will eventually hate me, give it time, she’s a horrible person and not really interested in me at all.

Let’s skip over the emotional baggage that comes from all the times my parents told me people have no interest in me and are just using me. There’s clearly something that really bothers my mom but she won’t openly discuss it with me, so I can only guess what the issue is. I would not be surprised if my mom actively sabotaged my relationship with this person in ways I don’t know about when I was younger, and now she’s afraid it’ll come up.

Am I wrong to continue talking with her?”

I was glad to see that Carolyn gave this writer good advice (in my opinion). She reminded the writer that she’s in her 30s, and she has the right to speak to anyone she wants. If her parents have a valid reason to discourage the connection, they need to explain themselves honestly. And even then, it should be up to the letter writer, who is in her 30s, for God’s sake, to make the choice as to whether or not she should speak to her relatives.

If you have followed my blog for any time, you probably know why I feel the way I do. It’s mainly because my husband and his daughters were estranged for many years. Ex wanted to punish Bill for agreeing to her divorce demands, so she sabotaged his relationship with his daughters. That was absolutely wrong for her to do, although it was not surprising that she did it. She did it to her first husband, too. Then, she claimed that both of her ex husbands were awful people and she was simply protecting the children from their “shitty fathers”.

In the one and only email I ever sent to Ex, I explained that if she was being truthful about her exes being shitty fathers, then she clearly has bad judgment and terrible taste in men, and she should not have married a third time and had more children. Every time she divorces, she forces her kids to be estranged from their fathers and their families. That’s very hard on them, and totally unfair. If she was really as good of a mother as she claims she is, her focus should have been on raising her “traumatized” children, and helping them recover from her poor choices in fathers for them. Otherwise, she’s just a liar, and is simply being spiteful and mean. And that makes her a shitty, toxic mother. Having been married to Bill for 19 years, I know, without a doubt, that Bill is definitely not an irresponsible father, as Ex tried to make him out to be. His ex wife just hates her exes more than she loves her kids.

When a person becomes an adult, they have the perfect right to make their own choices. But having parents who impose their petty bullshit grievances with other people on their children, simply because they’re their children, and they demand “loyalty” from their children, can cause making those decisions to be difficult. I know Bill’s daughter didn’t summon the courage to speak to Bill until she was about 23 years old and married. And even then, she was terrified to speak to him, even though she remembered him to be kind and loving.

Bill and his younger daughter missed out on about twelve precious years together, all because Ex imposed her hateful craziness on her own children. Younger daughter could have lost Bill forever when he went to Iraq, or when 9/11 happened. Fortunately, that didn’t happen, and now they can bond. Younger daughter is also talking to her grandmother again, after Ex tried to ruin that relationship. Younger daughter and MIL have a lot in common, and they clearly love each other. They never should have been forced into estrangement simply because of Ex’s manipulative and toxic ploys.

I remember when younger daughter and Bill started talking again. She said she didn’t want to tell her mother about it. She said it would be an “unhappy conversation”. Ex eventually did discover that younger daughter and Bill were in contact. Quite predictably, Ex gave younger daughter a ration of shit, telling her that Bill had really “hurt” her and that the divorce was “so painful” for her.

But Ex is the one who initiated the divorce in Bill’s father’s house over Easter. She’s the one who shacked up with #3 in a house Bill paid for. She’s the one who practically forced Bill to join a restrictive, culty religion, and caused him extreme financial distresses in the forms of bankruptcy and foreclosure. She’s the one who tried to ruin his relationship with his family of origin. And she is the one who sexually assaulted him. She has some nerve claiming that Bill ever “hurt” her. She was not the one who was left with literal scars in private areas of her body.

I think it’s interesting that Ex seems to have absolutely no concept of how painful it was for Bill to be divorced, forced to pay her half his salary for years, and was STILL prevented from having a relationship with his daughters, whom he has always loved very much. There was no reason why Bill should have been denied visitation with his daughters. I have often wish he’d taken her to court and either forced her to comply, or taken custody of them. But he allowed her to leave his finances so depleted that that option was out of the question.

Ex told outrageous lies about Bill to those girls, and even forced them to write hateful letters to him, disowning him. Yes, I am still pissed off about it. I was there to witness the pain she inflicted with her lies and vengeance. She lied about me, too, and made me out to be a horrible person… or maybe just a whore. And yes, I know the truth about myself, and I know that being angry about what’s already done isn’t productive. But I can’t help it. Reading letters like this one bring up the pain again, and piss me off anew.

Older daughter is still estranged, and continues to miss out on knowing her wonderful father. Maybe older daughter wouldn’t think he’s as wonderful as I do, but she’s never tried to find out for herself. She just takes her mother’s word for it. And, you know what? It’s her loss. All I can do is hope she’s happy.

It’s hard to tell why the letter writer’s parents have such an acrimonious relationship with the writer’s extended family. Whatever it is, it’s obviously between the parents and the relative, and the letter writer has never been clued in to what happened. Seems to me the parents need to come clean and offer a *rational and provable* explanation as to why there is so much strife, if they expect their daughter to consider heeding their wishes.

If they aren’t willing to explain what the problem is, then she should tell them to mind their own business. I did that with my own dad when he tried to involve himself in my personal affairs. It was very liberating for me, and shocking for him.

Either way, the letter writer should still initially proceed with caution, in case there was a good reason for the split. But my guess is that the rift was due to someone being stubborn, offended, or just plain petty. And there’s no reason why an adult should be compelled to choose a side in a situation like this one, especially when the person who is imposing the shunning can’t or won’t offer an explanation.

I also don’t think there’s any reason why the writer’s parents need to know who she talks to, particularly if she isn’t living in their home. It’s simply none of their business.

I wish this letter writer well. I understand her dilemma. It sounds like she’s doing some healing within her family, which is a great thing to do. She may find that reconnecting with this long estranged extended family member brings her much joy, and new insight into her own origins. As an adult, she has the perfect right to seek this healing and potential joy. Her parents need to butt out… or, as I frequently like to put it in my profane way, they need to fuck off.

Standard
book reviews, religion

A review of Shunned: How I Lost My Religion and Found Myself, by Linda Curtis…

I am fascinated by demanding American religions, so last February, I downloaded Linda Curtis’s book, Shunned: How I Lost My Religion and Found Myself. Regular readers of this blog may know that my husband, Bill, was once a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is a highly demanding religion. The Jehovah’s Witnesses are also very demanding. In fact, I have a cousin who was a JW and eventually left the faith, along with his family. I knew a little about the JWs and the Mormons before I met Bill, who officially left the LDS church in 2006. I knew something about how people who leave highly demanding religions tend to get treated… although in Bill’s case, his shunning was only partly due to the religion. He was really mostly shunned because his ex wife is an abusive narcissistic creep who used the church to punish her former source of supply.

Anyway, eventually, Bill’s situation partially rectified. One of his daughters– ironically the one more devoted to Mormonism– eventually reconnected with him. The other daughter remains estranged, but that seems to be more because of her mother’s toxic influence than religion. Still, I remain interested in stories about restrictive religions and what happens when people choose to leave them. Linda Curtis published her true story about leaving the Witnesses in 2018. When I noticed it got a lot of positive reviews on Amazon, I decided to read it.

I started reading Shunned right after I finished reading Fear, Bob Woodward’s first book about Donald Trump’s presidency. I probably would have fallen into this book regardless, but I think reading about religion after reading about Trump’s White House was especially inspired. It took me just a few days to read Shunned, while Fear took weeks. Linda Curtis has a somewhat engaging writing style, and her story is basically interesting. I’m not sorry I read Shunned, although I think it could be improved.

Who is Linda Curtis and what’s her story?

Linda Curtis grew up in Portland, Oregon, one of three siblings. Her mother was a devout Jehovah’s Witness. Her father, Frank, was not a believer until Linda and her siblings were adults. Linda’s family often prayed for her father to see “The Truth” and join the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Linda fervently prayed for that herself… but when her dad finally came around and decided to join the JWs, Linda was on her way out of the faith. No one knew that watching her dad’s baptism didn’t bring her the joy it brought her mother and siblings, or her first husband, Ross. They were unaware that Linda was experiencing a crisis of faith that led her to question the beliefs she had held dear her entire life.

Linda had always been a devout believer. Parents sent their questioning children to her because she was seen as a good influence. The religion had helped her develop a talent for sales, thinking on her feet, and connecting to people. Like all JWs, Linda went door to door to talk to people about the afterlife. It was something she’d never questioned until one day, when she knocked on her boss’s door. She hadn’t known he lived at that address. She found herself giving him the familiar spiel, telling him in not so many words that if he didn’t see “The Truth”, he was doomed to obliteration. Somehow, Linda realized, as she spoke to her boss, who had also been a mentor and a friend, that she was condemning a man she deeply respected.

After that chance meeting with her boss, Linda somewhat lost her zeal for the religion. Her first husband, Ross, a convert to the Witnesses, realized that his wife’s participation at Kingdom Hall was waning. He confronted her and she admitted that she was having issues with her beliefs. Moreover, Linda and Ross weren’t particularly compatible, and she realized that she didn’t love her husband.

The couple spoke to the elders at the church, but eventually decided that they needed to divorce. The split seemed relatively amicable, although due to their beliefs, they were still considered married in the eyes of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. The religion teaches that the only legitimate reason for a dissolution of a marriage is adultery or death. That meant they weren’t supposed to have sexual relations with anyone else.

Linda and Ross had married young. Linda didn’t initially go to college, even though she was very smart. The religion didn’t encourage her to get a degree. But she did get a job in banking, and it turned out she was very good at it. She got promotions and more and more responsibility. Her family wasn’t necessarily onboard with her having a career; she was supposed to be a wife and a mother. That family life coupled with strict religion was not what Linda wanted for herself. Linda makes Ross sound a bit whiney and immature, but that might be because of her use of dialogue, which was a bit melodramatic. But he also decided to take a drive in Linda’s brand new car after he’d been drinking during one of their fights. I was surprised by all of the drinking that was referenced in this story. I know JWs are allowed to drink (I don’t think my cousin would have ever been a member if drinking wasn’t allowed), but I was under the impression that drinking was supposed to be done sparingly.

After the divorce, Linda moved to Chicago, then eventually San Francisco, as she continued to excel at her career. Meanwhile, she dated men, and eventually had sex. Admitting to adultery made it possible for Ross to remarry, but it also led to the JWs casting her out of the religion. Fornication is what led to her being “disfellowshipped” by the Jehovah’s Witnesses and shunned by her family, even though she was legally divorced when she did it. She could have repented and gotten back into “good standing”, but Linda determined that she didn’t want her life ruled by religion. I can hardly blame her for that. Shunning and “disfellowshipping” people for being “disobedient” to a religion or other group is manipulative and toxic… it’s basically asshole behavior intended to control other people. As I am fond of saying, it’s NOT a punishment to be shunned by an asshole. However, when it’s your family and friends doing it, shunning can be very hurtful.

Through it all, her mother kept telling her that all she needed to do was come back to “The Truth” and get right with “Jehovah God”, and she would be welcomed back into the fold. It was the old “carrot and stick” cure. Jump through some hoops to make mom happy, and everything will be okay. It didn’t matter that the religion wasn’t working for Linda’s life or plans for herself. Linda’s brother, Randy, was the first to shun her, which cut her off from her niece and nephew. Her sister, Lory, who had struggled in the faith and got divorced from her first marriage, eventually also turned away from Linda, telling her that the family would never reach out to her (which turned out to be untrue).

Linda Curtis went on to marry her second husband, the late Bob Curtis. She became a stepmother and began to find her way in the world. But she paid a high price for that freedom, as her family and friends she had known in Portland couldn’t completely accept her outside of the religion. They didn’t completely cut her off, as the title of the book suggests, but they had a lot less to do with her. Leaving the JWs and living life on her own terms was a big step with a steep price. It does seem to me that the high cost was well worth it to Linda Curtis.

My thoughts

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I managed to get through this book somewhat quickly. It’s a fairly easy read. Linda Curtis is clearly very intelligent and basically writes well. Her story is interesting, if not a bit sad. Personally, I think shunning is a shitty thing to do, especially to a loved one. I don’t support it, mainly because at its core, it’s a power move consisting of emotional blackmail and control tactics. I empathize with Linda Curtis’s situation, dealing with a family that had once been so loving turning on her simply because she didn’t believe what they believed and dared to declare independence and free agency.

However… there are some things I noticed as I read this book. First, Linda Curtis has a fondness for so-called “fifty cent words”. I have two master’s degrees and a bachelor’s degree in English. Several times, I had to look up obscure words she used. I did so because I like to know the meanings of words I don’t know. My guess is that the vast majority of readers won’t take the time to do that, and most of them won’t know what some of the more obscure words mean, either. I don’t mind the occasional fancy vocabulary word, but I think too many of them can have a bad effect on writing. For many people, time is money, and it takes time to look up those fancy words. Those who don’t take the time to look up the fancy vocabulary words are going to miss some of the meaning in Curtis’s story. I wouldn’t mention this if it had only happened a couple of times, but it happened several times– enough times that I found it noticeable and annoying.

Secondly, Linda Curtis’s writing style is a bit “novelesque”, but not in a particularly creative or evocative way. Her writing sometimes comes off a bit like she was trying to set a vivid scene. But instead of using details and descriptions to jazz up her tale, she includes unnecessary details to the scenes that didn’t add anything. Like, for instance, at one point she mentions a fly landing on a dirty plate after a discussion she had. That action had no significance on the story she was sharing. It was an unnecessary detail. More than once, she mentioned getting into a car and putting on a seatbelt. There’s nothing wrong with safety in the car. But it was an unnecessary detail that didn’t add to the story and could have been edited out or replaced with something more pertinent to the story. That quality of her writing was irritating to me. It came off as amateurish.

And thirdly, Curtis uses a lot of dialogue that is a trite and one dimensional. Dialogue can be very effective in a personal story, but I think of it as more of a technique that breathes life into the story. This author’s use of dialogue frequently comes off as stilted and melodramatic. Curiously, she could have added some detail and “spark” to her dialogue, but she didn’t do that often enough. Instead, we get details about clothes people wore or flies on dirty dishes, rather than details about non verbal cues or tone of voice.

I did relate to Curtis’s story. I empathized with her sorrow over her family choosing a religion over a loved one. However… I did notice that while Linda’s family had less to do with her, they didn’t completely shut their door to her. She was invited to her grandmother’s funeral, and her parents came to her husband’s funeral. She received gifts from her family when she married her second husband, although no one in her family attended the wedding. I know other people who have been completely shunned, meaning no contact whatsoever, after leaving highly demanding religions like the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. My husband, for instance, lost complete contact with his daughters for about 12 years. One daughter hasn’t seen or spoken to him since 2004. That’s real shunning. What Linda Curtis describes is more like disapproval. People still spoke to her, even if there was less warmth and familiarity than there once was.

Much of Shunned was sort of a cut and dried story about Linda’s life, but there wasn’t that much deep insight into how she really felt launching a life outside of the JWs. I would have enjoyed reading a bit more about how she adapted to life “in the world”, as she got used to celebrating Christmas and birthdays. She does write a little bit about that, but not very much. She casually mentions having sex with a lot of men, attending a new age church after trying several different ones, and getting involved with friends. But she doesn’t really write about what those experiences were like beyond the surface. I also think she could have delved more into her relationship with her family and how it suffered when she left the JWs. I felt like much of what she writes is superficial, with a lot more about her successes at work. I guess what I’m trying to say is that this book could use a bit more heart and feeling, and less logic and reason.

I don’t think Shunned is a terrible book. I just think that a good editor could have made it markedly better. I also think that Linda Curtis should have gone deeper than she did. Her story lacks insight and spark. If she traded some of the insignificant details for more personal insights, this book would be much improved and more interesting. As I said, it’s obvious that Linda Curtis is very talented in her job. She’s intelligent and accomplished and yes, she finally did pursue her college degree. She has intellect and drive, and I know there must have been some truly amazing moments in her journey that she left out of her book. At the very least, she could have added some spice to the stories she did include.

Shunned is a serviceable enough read; I just don’t think that writing is necessarily Linda Curtis’s gift or her passion. To use musical terms, her writing is kind of the equivalent to someone with a nice choir voice as opposed to someone who sings solos, if that makes any sense. But with some direction, she could develop more of a “soloist’s sound”.

I am not sorry I read Shunned, and I would recommend it to those who are interested in the subject matter. I think I’d give it three stars out of five.

As an Amazon Associate, I get a small commission from Amazon on sales made through my site.

Standard