Past Tense, Present Progressive

There was always an expectation in my family that I would go to college.  Both of my parents had a college education and saw its value, and they didn't cave to the general attitude at our homeschooling cult church that higher education wasn't appropriate or necessary for girls.  Even though my parents' expectation was for me to attend an extremely fundamentalist Christian college simply to get a skill to "supplement my future husband's income, if necessary," that expectation was more than what many of my female peers at church had, and I'm grateful for it.  And, unlike many homeschooling families in our circles, my mom also put in the necessary work to make sure I wouldn't encounter any roadblocks on my way from homeschool high school to college--she made a very professional-looking and detailed high school transcript that included my GPA, she signed me up for the CHSPE (California High School Proficiency Exam) so that I could have a legal high school...

In my early 20s, I had my first experience living away from home. It was a Really Big Deal.  Me-- a weak, vulnerable, easily-decieved woman, according to the teachings of my family's pastor Reb Bradley --out on my own, flying to a faraway state.  I was going to spend a few months living and studying music at Bill Gothard's Indianapolis Training Center. ITC was a tall drab brick building surrounded by a parking lot, not much to look at.  But that didn't matter.  As I soon learned, the people staying there rarely ventured outside.  I personally only went outside about once a month during my few months there.  In order to leave, as a legal adult, I had to sign out, state my purpose for leaving, and verify that I was not leaving alone or with a male peer.  For a walk in a parking lot or a view of a run-down part of town, the hassle wasn't worth it. Inside the building was where all the excitement and drama played out.  For me, my time at I...

If I had stayed within the constraints of fundamentalism and Christian Patriarchy, my husband and I would absolutely not be happily married today.  Our relationship from the very beginning consisted of many departures from the teachings I grew up with.  Each of those departures furthered the development, health, and mutual happiness of our relationship. The first departure: As a single woman, I moved out of my parents' home to get a college education .  What is a completely ordinary step for many North American women was a  desperate and terrifying  leap for me.  My family's homeschooling church, led by  Reb Bradley , promoted  a very restrictive view of gender roles  along with a strong suspicion of the " liberal bias " of higher learning institutions.  Within the church culture, daughters were obligated to stay home under their father's authority until marriage; once married, they would be housekeepers and stay-at-home mothers. ...

Libby Anne from  Love Joy Feminism is currently doing a blog series about the adult children of Quiverfull/Christian Patriarchy, and I'm excited to be a part of it! Why did I choose to participate?  First of all, I think it's important to let other children from the Quiverfull/Christian Patriarchy culture know that they are not alone.  As a child in that culture, you are trained to blame yourself for any problems and to see yourself as a bad person for daring to question anything.  It's a big risk to break away from that culture, but hopefully these stories from Libby Anne's series will show you that it is possible to make it through.  And hopefully these stories will encourage you to share your own experiences as well. Second, I think that a lot of parents who raised their children in that culture are in denial about its effects, even if the parents are no longer participating in that culture themselves.  I hope this series will help to break throu...

I was not the type of daughter that my mother wanted.  I was a tomboy. My hair was very short and I preferred blue clothes.  I wanted to run faster and climb higher than anyone.  I wasn't afraid of slimy frogs and worms, and I could kill a spider without batting an eye.  I looked with confusion and disdain at the passive little girls with their hair-bows, sitting and talking about clothes and boys.  If I had known the term "badass" back then, I would have applied it to myself with pride. When I was young, my mom was more tolerant of this.  After all, in the early days, there were mostly boys in my age group in our small homeschooling community.  So I was free to run wild with the boys and join their sports games during our weekly park days. However, puberty was looming, and it signaled the end of my adventurous life.  It was time for me to learn to act like a "lady", and the means of teaching was through one sentence: "That's not very l...