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Out of the Cocoon: A Young Woman’s Courageous Flight from the
Grip of a Religious Cult
Brenda Lee
Robert D. Reed Publishers (Brandon, OR). January 2006. ISBN: 1931741654
(paperback), $14.95. 238 pages
Reviewed by
Mary Kochan
Nearly 15 years ago, Pennsylvania singer-songwriter Rick
Maas penned these lyrics portraying his impression at the age of five of the
conversion of his family to Jehovah’s Witnesses:
When I was a little boy,
Religion never brought me joy,
I used to think a lot about confusion.
The day they took our Christmas
tree,
I couldn't sit on Santa's knee,
There was no more make-believe,
Just to please them.
No more birthday cake for me,
If you are cut, just let it bleed,
Dedicate my life
To Armageddon.
Now another child convert and ex-member of that group has
given voice to the deep sense of loss, and subsequent rage, experienced by
children whose families enter high-demand, restrictive groups that rob them of
the normal joys of childhood. Brenda Lee was born into a materially poor, but
heritage- and relationship-rich, farming family in rural Pennsylvania, where a
child learned early the value of his or her labor to the family, where cousins
were as close as siblings, and where animals and the outdoors taught as many
lessons as books.
Her life was not idyllic; there were stresses on the
family, to be sure, and her parents were no more perfect that anyone else’s. But
her prospects for solid, healthy development into adolescence and adulthood were
good on that 1962 day she was born, and they stayed good until she was nine
years old. When her mother accepted a “free home Bible study” from visiting
Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Methodist Sunday-school teacher had no idea that this
study would end up costing her a relationship with one of her children and her
own relatives, and that Brenda, younger by a decade than her siblings, would pay
with her childhood.
Lee’s descriptions of the agonizingly boring and
interminable meetings and assemblies, and the way that “witnessing” devoured her
mother’s attention and ate up family life, will be familiar to all who were kids
in the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ organization. But unlike those who were raised in it
from infancy—such as me, a third-generation JW—Brenda and others whose families
convert during their childhoods experience searing losses. Beloved friends and
relatives are labeled “bad associations,” joyous holidays become shunned “pagan
rituals,” and hopeful dreams for the future morph into nightmares of what JWs
call “the battle of Armageddon and God’s destruction of this wicked system of
things.”
For Lee, the destruction of these relationships and the
emotional damage the association with the Jehovah’s Witnesses did to her life
are the unifying themes of her narrative. She begins her book with a dedication
to her son, Derek, and the promise that she will always love him
“unconditionally.” This is the love she longed for from her own mother, love
that the Jehovah’s Witnesses forbid. In that cult, as in others, family love
flows from a narrow faucet and the “organization” can close the spigot at any
moment.
Brenda Lee will leave home to make her way in the world not
only bereft of normal family support, but struggling to make sense of
relationships after her family’s conversion derailed her emotional development.
This is the narrative into which she invites us. Although
the prose is uneven, the author’s voice is so strong and sympathetic that early
on her story becomes gripping. Largely because she is so courageously
transparent, we care about this lonely girl and angry adolescent; we cheer for
her as she throws lifelines of friendship out of the cult in her struggle to be
free of a past that has damaged her more than she will fully realize for years.
We feel the frustration and heartache that accompanies her marriage to an
indifferent and unsupportive man who leaves her with full responsibility for
their infant son.
It is at this point the narrative bogs down and could have
used serious editing. It is often hard to follow the chronology of the events
Lee describes as she struggles to find the daycare help necessary for her to
support herself and her baby. Despite the editorial glitches of some portions of
the story, many women will strongly empathize with what she calls the “Daycare
Nightmare.” A standalone book on the subject would not be a bad idea for her
next project.
This portion of the book might seem to some readers a long
and unnecessary detour from Lee’s narrative, until we remember to ask why
this struggling young mother is in this predicament. Having left the Jehovah’s
Witnesses myself and having been divorced with two of my children still in
elementary school, I understand what it is like for a child to be without
parental support. And now, as a grandmother who assists nearly daily with
childcare for my own children’s children, I recognize the simple, practical
value of these ties that cults so callously cut. With sadness, I observe that we
could multiply by thousands this lament of Brenda Lee:
When I look back on our lives, I
truly regret that my family missed out on getting to know Derek. They never
experienced his first steps, first tooth, first word, first bike ride or first
day of school. They never knew what it was like to watch him hunt Easter eggs
and squeal with delight when he found one, proudly tie his shoes, or struggle to
write his name. They never attended his school plays, brought him homemade soup
when he was ill or watched him wildly tear open his Christmas presents after
weeks of anticipation. Surely they must feel a void in their lives.
And what has Derek missed? What
have the Jehovah’s Witnesses stolen from him? He’ll never know the joy of making
cookies with Grandma, being spoiled on a shopping trip by Grandpa, or hearing
stories of how Grandma and Grandpa met and fell in love. He’ll never share an
overnight visit with them, never frequent the homestead where his mother grew up
and never come to know, never even meet, his cousins, uncle or aunt. (p. 172)
Some former Witnesses will be disappointed with Out of
the Cocoon’s lack of attention to theology—to questions of religious truth.
This apparent lack is because, for many former members, theological questions
were uppermost in their minds and were the main reasons for their departure from
the organization. These people have written a number of memoirs that deal with
those issues. But Brenda Lee’s account is different, and refreshingly so, in
focusing almost entirely on relationship issues. For this reason, it is likely
to appeal to many former members of other high-demand groups who would surely
echo this cry of the heart: “[S]hould any religion have the right to scoop out
an individual’s identity and dismantle their [sic] family unit? Is that
what the Divine Being had in mind? Weren’t we instilled with independent thought
for a reason?” (p. 214)
Indeed we were, and it is as a thoughtful and insightful
woman that Brenda Lee has penned this memoir that celebrates the triumph of her
successful flight to freedom and compels us to celebrate with her.
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