My dad has always been the spiritual truth seeker in our family. I first became aware of Scientology when I was just into my teens, and Dad would come home from a long day's work and then turn around and drive 25 miles into the city every night to 'study' something. Mum wasn't impressed as we were a large family of 6 kids, and it must have been terribly hard for her.
My brother was the first one of us to go with Dad to find out about Scn. I followed shortly after and my lasting memory is of attending a seminar. As I walked into that room full of smiling and vibrant people, my world expanded out of sight and I felt I had come home. I was treated as an adult and it was terrific.
I started off with the PE course, and my goodness did that feel grown up! 14 is such a vulnerable age and I had never really fitted in with my peers at school. I had drawn pictures of spaceships and so on from a young age, and it felt like this new information I was studying was all old information I had forgotten and discovered anew. I felt accepted.
It took a while for Mum to come around and I remember her getting extremely angry with my brother and I for acknowledging her in this new way. She couldn't stand her children saying "OK!" to her and overall she was pretty anti Scn for a while, having spent most of her life as a staunch Christian. We had been raised as Methodists and went to church every Sunday, so it was a massive change for Mum.
However, she did come around. I can't remember the sequence of all that happened, but some time in the next year it was decided that the whole family would be going to Flag. RJ67 had just come out and there was a planet to save! I had left school by that time - what did a wog school have to offer me after all? - and was doing my first Dianetics Course and helping out in Sydney org. We all ended up at Saint Hill instead, and that is another story covered elsewhere.
Once a whole family is involved, and you are transported to a different country at a young age to become part of the isolating Scn world, it is hard to leave. And that was my struggle for the next 30 years.