Being Brave

This is my second post today, but when it calls, it calls.
I ended up revisiting a book I read last year, "I'm Perfect, You're Doomed -Tales From a Jehovah's Witness Upbringing" by Kyria Abrahams.
Thank you to Kyria and to everyone who is brave enough to share stories of a confusing upbringing, for lack of a better description... and then the final realization as an adult (if you are lucky) that you were raised in a cult.
Her blog is interesting. http://www.kyriaabrahams.blogspot.com/ -- of course, I make no claim to be objective because if her childhood doesn't begin to make sense to you, you might not have the same reading experience I had. You might not laugh as I did and you probably won't cry as I did... because she is spot on in describing the idiosyncrasies of Jehovah's Witnesses families.
I've been thinking a lot about my background lately. I shy away from accepting I was robbed- after all, I tell myself, I wouldn't be the person I am today. Maybe I'm afraid to face it. Maybe I avoid the intense emotions of feeling cheated out of parents who can love me unconditionally. Well, wait - here's the mind fuck. They do love me, but they just need me to come back to the "flock" so they can really love me. It's like there's this really loud barking vicious dog that stands between my parents and me... one of my brothers too. It's personified as this cult that claims to be "the truth" - but wait, don't they all?
I don't know how to tame this beast. I don't know how to beat it, hurdle it, call it what you will. It's so subtle. It's like fighting the wind, just leaves you tired and spent. The neurosis runs so deep. It's like they've built train tracks for the same route, over and over, and how do you suggest that there might be other places to see on this planet? They can't even begin to comprehend it.
It reminds me a little of "The Truman Show" - your whole life you've been painted one reality. But it's not the way things really are. You're lucky you saw the crack or heard the record skip. I also often go back to "The Wizard of Oz" - the scary entity is a scared little man behind a curtain. And what's the point?
Ah, I could go on and on and this is perhaps best saved for a better time. But Kyria got me thinking about all of this injustice... and how people give up their thinking and feeling faculties because they're too damn scared to figure it out on their own. Somebody told them they were bad or a failure or incompetent, and they believed it.
But really, we're all figuring it out as we go. A good friend calls this whole life experience "workshopping" - dealing with relationships --- we're just workshopping, we're just making it up as we go... and that is beautiful because it's real.
By the way, I took a beautiful yoga class tonight taught by a beautiful man... and I felt something deeper than I've felt in a long time. This may be something and this may be nothing. But it's a start either way. He had Johnny Depp hair- I'm sorry if that might offend him, but I was dreaming the other night that I needed a man with Johnny Depp hair that he could tuck behind his ears, just the right length. He was really sweet, this Yoga instructor, and I warmed to his sincerity. I read recently that smiling at people is a way of sending your love to them. His smile touched my heart. God, I sound so corny. But, can I possibly describe how refreshing it was to be amongst real people, not the decked out in all the right gear people, but the mom with her two kids and the sort of awkward doctor who was on call? Beauty, pure beauty. And a fabulous work out to boot! I'm on top of the world.
The energy was good and it was what I needed. So, thank you to the universe for that.
Good Night ----