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An intro... of sorts (Part 2)

We spent a total of six months in Corvallis, Oregon - home of the Oregon State Beavers and Dad's alma mater. Grandmother ended up dying at the end of the fifth month (April 2002). About one month into our stay Justin, who was fourteen at the time, became too belligerent for Mom to handle so he was sent to the Indianapolis Training Center (ITC). He stayed there for the extent of our time in Oregon, except for the last 2 weeks when he was brought back to help pack up Grandmother's house. At that point there was nothing that could be done about him. He would leave after he woke up around noon and not come back until 2-3 am. No one knew what he was doing or how to make him stop.

Mom and Dad went to see Billy G. on the way back to Ohio because he was at ITC when we went through Indiana. He told them to disown Justin and leave him there where they would take custody. This obviously wasn't really an option.

We got home in early May 2002 and had the summer from hell. Justin was awful! He had finally had enough of the legalistic totalitarian rule and brought so many contraband items into the house. He started carefully with his music with bands like Good Charlotte, but he quickly graduated to death metal and bands such as Slipknot and Static X. He would insist on blasting this throughout the entire house when Mom and Dad were gone. At this point he was the oldest child at home except for in the summer when my older sister would come home from college, but she worked most of the time. As a result of this, there was no one at home to make him stop. He quickly spiraled down into occultism. He was a legitimate member of a coven. I have no idea how he got attached to it, but he was apparently in pretty deep. None of us knew about it until after the fact. He turned 15 that summer.

My parents were going to put us all (the younger four) into a private Christian school that fall, but I had always heard how sinful any school was so the concept terrified me and I cried and they ended up only enrolling Justin. He did well academically, but continued to spiral out of control at home. There was a minimum of one screaming fight between him and Mom and /or Dad every day.

In March of 2003 he attempted to hang himself in our backyard and then spent two weeks in the psych ward. Mom and Dad finally decided that they had to do something about him and sought out a counselor who specialized in demonic possession. My parents, my older siblings (the ones who knew about that specific problem) and I all believed that he was possessed. There was no other way to explain his sudden change in behavior. He had always been stubborn and violent (I have scars that will attest to that), but he was usually repentant and would try and make it right after the fact. This became not the case at all, so Mom and Dad called in a Christian counselor who specialized in that kind of thing.

It took almost a month for things to finally start to settle down, and during this time I was left all day, alone with my 2 younger siblings, and anywhere from 2-4 of the woman's special needs foster kids. I was 12, almost 13 at the time. (While I was ok with it at the time, I don't think that it was the greatest idea to leave an adolescent girl alone with kids who had severe handicaps and give her the instruction, "don't interrupt us unless it's a matter of life and death.")

After that we didn't do anything else organized with ATI, but me and my younger siblings were still homeschooled. I graduated having been homeschooled k-12, but they put my younger brother part time into the same private school that Justin had been in at the beginning of 10th grade. He graduated from a real high school - the first of this generation as he likes to remind us constantly.

So, that is the abridged version of why we aren't in ATI anymore. There's much much more, which I will eventually get into.

An intro... of sorts (Part 1)

I was born into the cult of ATI. I am the epitome of a cult child because I probably wouldn't have even been born if it weren't for my family's membership in ATI. My family has a "Gothard gap" - a significant period of time between the oldest three and the younger four. My parents joined in 1986 - the year before the first of the "second family" was born. I'm the fifth of seven and being one of the middle children in an extremely competitive family is hard enough without the added pressure of the image that has to be upheld in ATI.

I grew up going to the Childrens' Institute, and later Basic Seminars, and embarking on the yearly pilgrimage to Knoxville. We left the the year before they switched to the regional Advanced Seminars.

ATI and its various appendages was the single-most influential thing in my childhood and adolescence and it even has an uncanny effect on me now. I can't stand the song Umbrella by Rihanna, because it reminds me of the Umbrella Song and the "umbrella of protection" that was oh, so necessary. Any of the character qualities that were hocked at CI's and the numerous CF's that I had to sit in on (because we have to support our older sister) still have the ability to make my blood boil - especially initiative, because that's the one that my Mom always used to say we had none of.

My first memories of ATI are from when I was about 3-4. My brothers (Justin and Austin) and I would stay at my Grandma's house while my parents and older siblings went to Basic - first in Flint, MI and later in Archbold, OH. When I was six I was allowed to go to the CI. I thought I was the coolest thing ever. I went to by first and only Basic Seminar when I was 12 and then I just knew I had reached the pinnacle of awesomeness. Besides all of that there was the yearly trek to Knoxville in a stifling black twelve passenger van. Until I was eight (and old enough for pre-Excel) I had to stay in the dorms with Mom and my younger siblings and watch the seminars on the TV. I witnessed my first and only death when I was seven on that TV when the speaker died half-way through his speech. (For the life of me I can't remember what his name is and I don't have enough "initiative" for the involved Google search that it would require to figure it out.) Mom still has the recorded tape somewhere in her crates of ATI propaganda that she refuses to get rid of. That's about the extent of my memories of the actual organized part of ATI.

But the practices that ATI encouraged and in some cases mandated are what stuck with me. The totalitarian authority that my father wielded was awful and it did far more harm than good. Growing up in a chauvinistic home where the females were subservient gave me the impression that men were obviously better than women. I can remember my Mom after reading Debi Pearl's "Created to be His Helpmeet," talking to one of the other ATI mothers about how she had to give up so much in order to be submissive and how she loved it. Specifically the conversation was about paying bills and how that was the man's role. Yes, that was even became a gender specific task.

My oldest two brothers went to ALERT, and my older sister refused to do EXCEL and instead went and got her degree. Granted, it was from Patrick Henry, but at least it wasn't BJU or PCC.

My parents blame, but I thank (in some ways - we'll get into that later) my brother Justin for finally pushing them over the edge to get out. The beginning of the end was late 2001 when my grandmother started going downhill fast. Mom and the entire second family moved to Oregon to take care of her. My brother Justin had been acting up and being extremely rebellious (that word has so many bad memories attached to it) for several years, but it got much worse when it was just Mom left as the authority... and that is where I will pick back up another time because it's 3:15 a.m.