Category — Freedom from Patriarchy Series by Erika
It alienates people, pushes friends and loved ones away
by Erika
My friend was waiting for me to convince her to help me run away.
As my freshman year of high school plodded on, things at home became more and more constrictive and conservative. My friends from school started to drift away as my parents pulled the reigns in at home tighter and tighter. The few friends that stuck around were the ones that were known mostly as the “outsiders” at the public school, so they were of a rebellious and non-conformist attitude anyway.
I always felt that my other friends had moved on from me, but I’ve found out recently that it wasn’t that they moved on from me, but they had felt that my parents had pushed them away and that they were no longer welcome around my family. Just this past year, I was able to reconnect with a couple of girls that I was friends with in school and when I asked them about their perspective on what was going on at my house, I was really surprised to find out that they hadn’t forgotten me but felt just as confused as I did.
During the NLQ Carnival Days, I shared a note that I had gotten from a school friend, but I also have another one that I didn’t share. Below are the two emails that I got…I think it speaks volumes as to how the “outside world” processed what was going on in our family.
“I was upset with your parents for you (because I didn’t understand) for making you give up your “wants” – basketball, friends, school. I could not understand then how they could change so much so very quickly. I thought that church ‘up on the hill’ must be a very strange place indeed. I don’t think I even knew you went to a mission somewhere – or, if I did I have forgotten.
“I remember Kerri’s birthday parties or get togethers at your house before everything changed and we had such fun. The next thing I knew, you [and Kerri] were no longer attending school but you could still play ball with us. I enjoyed that. Then I remember the day you came to tell us you were not allowed to do that anymore either. That was a very disheartening day – I could not understand (it was before we had had the opportunity to learn about oppression, to read about it and truly discuss it and emotionally, I am not sure I was truly ready to understand it). I considered myself an intelligent person and I could not wrap my head or heart around it. I also considered your dad and mom to be intelligent persons, so how could they make such a decision? [Read more →]
January 2, 2010 No Comments
Someone was trying to control every aspect of my life … including my clothes
by Erika
Me and my youngest brother, 1991
After being made to quit the basketball team and the FHA group, I was trying to find any way that I possibly could to stay close to my friends. I called them when I could, I would wait outside on my porch after school ended so that I could talk to my classmates that lived on my street as they walked home each afternoon, I would try to get down to the school or a friend’s house when the chance came available. In the meantime, my parents were withdrawing us from as much as they could to be able to cut off as much outside influence and friendship as possible.
I remember Mr. Thompson feeding my father the line, “Take away everything that is important to your children and eventually, you’ll be the only thing left that’s important to them and they’ll cling to you.” My father gobbled up every bite that Mr. Thompson fed him, as Mr. Thompson supposedly had a perfect family. As my father and mother were being “fed” by Mr. Thompson’s horrid beliefs, I felt like I was dying a starvation of the soul.
As I look back at myself as a soon-to-be 15 year old girl, I see now that the depression that was to rear its ugly head at the age of 19 had taken seed in me when my life started to unravel at 14 years old. I only realized the climax of that depression when it hit later on, but in hindsight, I can see so clearly that it was a long process of eating away at my spirit over those long years.
I wrote in Part 3 about the first boy I had kissed. It wasn’t long until he was my boyfriend. I kept it from my family because I knew I would be under a sort of “house arrest” if I were to be found out. I tried to be around him as much as I could, but with an older sister who found it her duty to always be watching me, simply so that she could tattle on me, I had to become evasive, elusive and secretive. It was quickly an art that I had mastered…..for a while.
October 26, 2009 No Comments
No choices of my own
by Erika
My sister and I in the winter of 1991-1992, the year we started homeschooling
It wasn’t long before my parents got really frustrated with the church in town and wanted something different. My father told the pastor that we would be going down to the church in Bellows Falls (run by John Thompson) but would still come to services here and there at the church in town. The pastor felt frustrated at the time, too, so he gave my parents his blessing to attend this other church.
I remember when the people at church found out that we wouldn’t be attending regularly there anymore. Many were upset and felt offended. Quite a few voiced accusations that my parents only stayed long enough for everyone to help support my missions trip to Africa and then chose to leave. This was entirely untrue and my parents were afraid that this might have been the case with some people’s thinking, but there really wasn’t anything they could say or do to have those people believe otherwise. Many felt hurt and confused by the very open and public stance that my parents took with the church.
As a teenager, I loved the church we were part of and it crushed me to leave. It felt like family there. In my mind, you didn’t just walk away from family, you worked through things. The only thing that I understood from all of this was that my parents were slowly changing over to a strict, conservative mindset and the church didn’t fit within that mindset. Since the church wasn’t going to change for my parents, they decided to change churches to something that fit within their mindset. Or was it that my parents were changing to fit into someone else’s mindset? In any case, the changes were all becoming to be too much for a 14 year old to handle. Especially one that had only entered puberty the year before.
All in the course of 4 months, I had been told that I wasn’t going back to the public school for my sophomore year, I was told that I was going to be homeschooled, I went on a 2 month missions trip where I tasted independence and freedom, I was told that we were changing churches…..
But the changes that happened in those 4 months were only the beginning. [Read more →]
September 30, 2009 No Comments
Something didn’t sit quite right with me …
by Erika
The morning that I left for my missions trip Boot Camp. I’m pictured with my pastor and his wife.
A newspaper story that was done before I left for my missions trip.
When I left for Africa in the summer of 1991, I was excited about my trip and the things that I would see but I was also disappointed to know that I would be coming home to my sophomore year as a homeschooler. I was crushed by my parents’ decision and begged them to let me stay in school. After all, I wasn’t the one that wanted to be taken out and I wasn’t the one that had the problems in school. My parents told me that it was all or nothing. If they were taking out one kid, they were taking us all out. If my 3 siblings, who didn’t mind the situation at all, were going to be homeschooled, then so was I. Besides, my mother had told the school that NONE of her children would be back the next year and she didn’t want to go back on her word. Even more importantly, she didn’t want to appear as though she’d compromised by sending one of us and keeping the others home.
While I was away, I had time to reflect on the upcoming changes that would be happening when I got home. Being disconnected from it all and not being around my friends for the summer made it a little easier to come to terms with the fact that I would not be going back to school in the fall. I think some of this also had to do with being on an emotional and experiential high with being in a foreign country and on a missions trip. [Read more →]
August 10, 2009 No Comments
It started with homeschooling
by Erika
My sister and I in a photo booth. I think we were 12 & 13. She’s older than I am.
My childhood from the time I was born to the age of 14 was pretty much normal and mainstream. I grew up in a Christian home, going to church every Sunday, taking part in VBS in the summers, going to public school (though I went a few years to a Christian private school when I first started school), playing with the neighbor kids, watching cartoons in the morning….all the things that kids did in a normal family and neighborhood setting.I was born in Rhode Island at the end of 1976. I became a Christian at the age of 7. I remember sitting on the bed in my Oma and Opa’s house (my grandparents lived upstairs from us) and my Oma walking me through the prayer that I desperately wanted to pray. My Oma was always very serious about what this step meant and as a young child, I found myself praying that prayer every night just in case I got it wrong the first time…or the second time…or the third time…..or…. I remember telling my father about this and he assured me that I didn’t have to do it over and over again. That one time was enough and no matter how I did it, God heard it and it was good with Him. That set my mind at ease. In all honestly, I used to wish that my father or mother had walked me through that as my Oma tended to be too serious about these sorts of things and wanted it to be done right (in other words: her way) and in general, scared the crap out of us kids when it came to heaven and hell. At that age, I felt that my parents presented a much more loving God that my Oma did, which turned out to be quite ironic years later. The tables turned quite dramatically…but I’m getting ahead of myself here.
When I was 8 years old, we moved to New Hampshire. We moved into a large 3-story colonial house in a small town with about 1500 residents. The school we attended housed 300 kids in grades K-12 and that was with 3 towns combined. We were in the mountains and living in a rural area and the neighborhood was like a large playground to us. We lived on the side of a small mountain and behind our house was nothing but woods and the old fashioned rope tow that was used for skiing in the winter. There were other kids in the neighborhood and even though we were the new kids, we eased ourselves in to the school and the neighborhood without any trouble.
My sister and I in 4th and 5th grade and on the Biddy Basketball team for school.
As we were driving the moving van up the hill to our house, we passed by a big white church. Not long after we pulled into the driveway of our “new” house, cars started pulling in behind us. The people at the church were having a clean-up day around the church grounds and saw us driving past and followed us to help us unload. We didn’t know any one there, but quickly made friends and the next Sunday, we were sitting in the pew at church. This became our church home for the next 7 years. [Read more →]
July 29, 2009 No Comments
Freedom From Patriarchy
by Erika
Here in the US, we celebrated our nation’s independence and freedom this past Saturday, the 4th of July. This particular holiday always makes me think of my own Independence Day.
We had a BBQ with family and friends this past Saturday and while we were sitting inside to stay out of the rain, I was telling my friends about the jumper that my sister had made for herself back when she was 18. I had recently posted the picture of our family on my Facebook account and one of my friends asked, “Does your sister really have a cow on her jumper?”
Yes, she did.
In fact, she had the whole farm SCENE. The field, the red barn, the fruit trees, the cows, etc. My mom, sisters and I all worked together in our custom sewing business. We made modest apparel for other ultra-conservative families. The farm fabric was bought in a huge bolt so that we could make little dresses, pinafores and aprons for young girls, but at 18 years old, my sister made herself a jumper out of the fabric. By choice. Her white head covering and hair in a bun completed the look. I took the album out so that I could prove to my friends that we really DID wear the frumpy “modest” clothing, along with the horrible head coverings. [Read more →]
July 8, 2009 No Comments
