I was born and raised in a religious cult in Aotearoa, New Zealand until the age of 17. When the cult fell apart I was thrown into a world I didn’t know or understand. Overcoming my fear of the unknown, I set off on a journey of discovery to learn about life in the real world, meet the wonderful people in it and to answer the question ‘Who Am I?’
My journey has taken me across continents with many life experiences along the way. Life has thrown plenty of curve balls, each time I have picked myself up and carried on, doing what I needed to learn and grow.
What coming out of a religious cult has taught me is that there are no absolutes in life. The rules are all made up by someone, somewhere. Everything can be changed, every rule, every idea, every concept, every cultural and societal way-of-being can be changed.
We are controlled and limited only by our own minds and our ideas of what we think we should be doing, what we have been told and taught, when really, anything is possible.
I remember reading a story years ago about how elephants are trained to not run away. They tie a baby elephant to a pole with a big chain and leave it there. As the elephant grows the chain is gradually substituted for a rope which becomes thinner and lighter. By the time the elephant is fully grown it will not move away from the pole even though it is only tied with a piece of thin twine, because it believes it can’t, like when it was a baby chained to a pole.
We are the same, we don’t realise we can do anything we want, whenever we want, we are gradually taught that we are chained. But we are not chained, we are free and I have learnt that the world can be what I choose it to be.
I have changed my name, I have made decisions and changed circumstances in my life that have gone against traditional views of what is expected of a woman in society. It hasn’t always been easy, and it doesn’t mean I haven’t been afraid, but it means I haven’t let my fear stop me.
Every time I do something outside my comfort zone I become stronger, and my comfort zone becomes bigger. It doesn’t happen all at once, it happens over time and I’m guided by my own mottos:
“Every day that I don’t give up is a day towards something new”
I believe that life is constantly changing and evolving around us and there is so much for us to learn and experience as humans. If we can let go of the limitations of our minds and our thoughts, trust ourselves and trust in the good of humanity, embrace and ride the waves of change in our own lives with an open heart, we will experience the wonders of life and what it truly means to be human.
One of my favorite quotes is from Howard Thurman:
“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive”
13 year old me during ‘foot washing’.
We were considered an adult when we turned 13 and attended the many church meetings each week, foot washing was a ceremony we all participated in once a month following Jesus example set out in the bible.
We wore long skirts and headscarves, women were considered unclean when they had their periods and had to wear a little bag of salt somewhere on their body, usually tucked inside our bra.
The following photos show a garden inside the cult, built by cult members during it’s prime, and then years after the cult fell apart – life is constantly changing, nothing stays the same forever, it’s what makes life an exciting and wonderful journey.
