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If you ask me, I think you communicated that point very well. And I have to wholeheartedly agree.

Hi Charlene .... so glad to have purchased your book. I'm heading into Part 3 ... and have cried twice already at certain parts. Wow ... Over the years since leaving TWI I participated in several therapy groups ... had personal one-on-one therapy and have read many, many good books on healing and recovery out of authoritarian groups/cults, BUT THIS BOOK -- because you write of specific SHARED incidents, memories of the same people and places and things (!) -- same, meaning we both know who they are! -- is really having a deep, and very good, effect on me. There have been several powerful "ah-ha" moments -- so much so, that I realized I needed to have a yellow highlighter with me as I was reading! Your added, now enlightened, "30-years-out" insights that you pepper in and among those specific ideas that you recount that we all so readily believed as truth (without any deliberation or even consideration of their veracity!) are really quite remarkable ... and yeah, like I said, enlightening, to say the least! It's like you write it as though you are there ... but then it gets augmented with what you know NOW about what we didn't know then -- and the effect is quite liberating! I don't know if I communicated well enough what I just meant ... but suffice it to say, I am mad about your memoir. And a big thanks to you for this literary "labor of love." I think what is most wonderful about the effect your book is having on me is the lifting of "guilt" that is happening. I, along with my two sisters, are part of the approximately 35% of American girls/females who have come out of familial sexual abuse. I remember from reading much of John Bradshaw's work that the most liberating thing one can express to one who has sexual abuse in their history is that it wasn't their fault. (In fact there's a very poignant scene in "Good Will Hunting" where Robin Williams, the therapist, says exactly that to Matt Damon, and he breaks down in tears ... for the first time in weeks of therapy ... because of the relief that is experienced with just hearing that one powerful truth.) Well, I see a similar dynamic here ... with those of us who succumbed to the siren call of "love, joy, peace, community -- family! -- and above all, a place to LOVE GOD AND OTHERS TOGETHER ... i.e., who succumbed to years of dedicated involvement in The Way. After I'd left TWI ... there were many periods of asking myself ... "How could I have given so much of my heart and soul, and time, and money, and energy for so many years to this group -- and have so little to show for it all in my own life?!" Even recently I've had that recurring thought waft in! That guilt and shame that comes over a person, if ever so subtley. (No college degree, no excellent career, no young marriage with children I got to raise.) The shame and guilt of the unspoken answer to that question was quite real for me. What your book is providing is the truth of the subtle dynamics of authoritarian, cultic groups ... and how the VULNERABILITY of those of us who got caught in its undertow (!) is key. With you it would appear to have been the death of your mother. With me it was the giving up of my child for adoption. (I got witnessed to just six weeks after that!) I saw from reading your book that the absence of a MOURNING period was crucial in making one even more vulnerable to something like TWI. So that recurring theme of "it wasn't your fault" is one that brings such comfort and relief -- because truly, it was not. Although you wrote about your introduction to the Young Life fellowship (below), as I read it I saw how it applied to me re: TWI! "A new high school friend, Judy, came along with 'Jesus answers.' My vulnerability to her fellowship came from teenage heartache over losing my quarterback boyfriend and angst over my father's strict rules, but I suspect in LARGEST MEASURE (emphasis added) it came from buried grief over Mom's death." And here's the part that struck me so powerfully, Charlene: "I did not mourn her fully. I did not know how. I rushed back to regular life at school and kept a stiff upper lip, as my dad would say. But that trauma wounded me and no distraction helped. ... I needed love. I needed support. Cheerful Judy came along with an easy crutch for the emotional cripple I was. With Young Life, she unwittingly led me back to the God of my childhood." I never mourned the loss of my child . . . until 23 years later when he found me ... and grief I'd buried in a virtual vault of my heart began to tumble out. [In fact, at times it still tumbles out! But I'm usually with trusted friends who care and are comfortable with my tears ... and it is always cathartic!] Well, I fear I've talked way too much about personal things here ... but hey ... for me your book is uncovering things needing to be uncovered and in the process, there is a good deal of healing and understanding that it is bringing. (And I'm only on page 90! I can only imagine the insight, healing and understanding the rest of the book will prompt!) I just wanted to let you know. So thanks again for sharing your story, Charlene.

Dear readers of Undertow who've shared their responses here, I am overcome with gratitude. That's my understatement of the century. Thank you for sharing your hearts!

I suspect she is behind the new marketing effort to make TWI appealing to more people before she "steps down." There are several newish Way websites listed in the right-hand sidebar of the main website. IMO, they are an attempt at showing different "faces" for the organization. Here's one A more modern looking TWI website. The common thread: they hammer away with V.P. Wierwille's insistence that TWI offers followers a way to find "the accuracy of the Word." With no credentials, with no understanding of what everyone OUTSIDE TWI considers as "biblical research," it may be that the next TWI "prez" --without R.R.'s marketing skills that she learned first-hand from VPW, will have his hands full trying to convince outsiders that TWI is what it purports to be.

Rocky......yep, Charlene's book would go a long way to explaining twi-doctrine, my thought processes and my personal story as well. But in my case.......add a couple of WOW years, red-flags during inrez training, a 10-day deprogramming episode, more corps assignments and staying after dem "fog years" to thwart chrisgeer's power-grab. What a ride! LOL. Thankfully, I too.....had years of inner-dissention about wierwille since 1978 [and martindale and geer] that had been building and catalogued to memory. But, all in all......our two boys would understand their parents' journey in a huge way by reading this book.

So happy ya'll have found the story worthwhile. Thank you VERY much for reading it. Cheers to you, brave souls, Charlene

I tend to agree with your last sentence, TLC. vic was fully into JBS by 1968. I was in-Rez from 73-76, and then was at all those other stupid meetings aforementioned. I never heard anything like what you reported during any of that time. !976 was when all the millions in Gold and Silver were distributed among the most "trustworthy" corpse grads on the field. There were only 4 corpses graduated by August 1976. I alone was given 2 pneumatic tubes filled with 200 SA Gold Krugerands each. Gold was selling at $800+ an ounce back then. Each Krugerand is one Ounce of pure gold. 400 X 800= $320,000.Plus 2 Army Ammo boxes each filled with $6000 US coin junk silver. So, my part of Jacob's Storehouse as it was called, was $342,000 of gold and silver. There was also an equal amount given to Ken Brown to store at the MI limb. So, when i became the limb and region guy i lived at the MI limb in Greenville, MI. so now my "portion" was at $684,000 worth of gold Krugerands and US silver coins. I lived in Detroit and was MI state WOW coordinator. By the end of the twit year 1977-78, all that gold and silver was transferred back to HQ. What was out there was personally collected by Howard and placed in a recessed cargo bay on vic's coach at each of the 7 regions Weekend In The Word. For the midwest region, OH, MI, IN, IL, WI, and MO, ours were collected at 6AM, Monday morning in front of the Conrad Hilton Hotel in downtown Chicago where we held our weekend in the word.Which means, 1.8 million dollars of gold and silver were handed over to howard and put on the coach in the center of downtown Chicago! Never heard about all that precious metal again. Gold eventually climbed to $1700 an ounce, and silver went up to $52 an ounce. In case you were wondering where Rosie's little nest egg came from. So, piecing our timelines together, I tend to think that what you heard was scuttlebutt from corpse kids or staff who wanted to be "in-the-know'. Personally, I think the whole malpack and meeting that never was fiasco, was designed to hide the money from the IRS, which was auditing twit because of the Gahagan disaster in ME, store it in secret stashes all around the country until the heat was off, and bring it all back to HQ to launder it through "legitimate" investments. That's what they're living off today. That's where most of Rosie's $64 million dollar stash came from. Now you know where your money went. Thanks for your responses TLC. What are your thoughts on it all?