Free to shine
Shiny & Free
I realised I hadn't finished posting my expanded story here, so here's the end bit to keep it all in one place.
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Mish mash memories of Saint Hill
Being on Reception and having a woman run in screaming that her husband had just killed himself. I can’t remember who it was or what happened other than her wanting a GO person to make it right, and her extreme distress.
Being locked in a tent after The Battle of Britain event where no-one was allowed to leave until they had signed up for their next level. The angry queue of people waiting to get out that door!
The secrecy.
Things that had to be done yesterday.
The drama of flaps to be handled.
Not having anything you had produced with blood sweat and tears taken into account or remembered beyond the time it happened.
Being so very tired, and often hungry.
Being stressed about finding a lift into EG as it was an awfully long walk. I was once stopped by the police walking down that road, a young female late at night. They gave me a lift. Most of the time you waited in the car park until someone took you home, or close by. I remember the crowding of many more students into cars than was safe, especially when it was snowing. Getting a lift with a US celebrity in his wonderful Lotus, what a trip that was!
1978 - 1982
In 1978 I returned to Australia, though a different city. As I had blown staff in the past I was ineligible to join again, without a lot of ammends anyway. So I started the amends. This consisted of volunteer work for CCHR and the local Class 4 org GO, mostly typing as it was something I could do efficiently, and recruiting, which I was lousy at.
I married a fellow staff member and was pregnant in 1979. The CCHR work was mostly done in a tin shed in the backyard, and during the summer months this was hell on earth with temperatures over 40C. I did that for a year and a half, did my Student Hat and petitioned to be able to join staff, and it was OK’d, so joined the GO, pending final security clearance.
In April 1980 the Melbourne org was burnt down, which was a tremendous shock. It then operated from 5 different houses for quite some time. My memory of that time is one of great team spirit and making things go right, against the odds. “Rocky” was our theme – it was us against ASIO and the SPs out there who were trying to take us down! There were some good people there. We all finally moved into new org premises in the city.
I worked until the day my baby was born and luckily was granted 5 weeks maternity leave! I had a wonderful homebirth, and it was just in time to be announced at Friday muster. (Staff actually cared about each other then. ) My baby rarely slept more than a few hours at a time and became very ill when he was a few weeks old. I coped as best I could and returned to post to find there was a big flap with everyone in the GO being blasted as DB shits and having to M4 Simon Bolivar – including me!! I remember feeling really sick, holding a newborn baby late into the night trying to get checked out.
With both of us on staff, the only way we survived was my husband moonlighting, as most often there was no pay or something ridiculous like $5 a week. I was allowed to bring my baby on post with me for a short time, and although I know now I was lucky to have time with him, it was extremely difficult. There was no running water or facilities and trying to keep him quiet was almost impossible. I was allowed to work only days during those months but then was ordered to be on post for the fulltime schedule, which was 9am – 10.30pm with Sunday afternoon off. I had no support of any kind and the stress was so great that my husband blew in order for us to survive. He was almost expelled at this point but managed somehow to come back part time. I found day care for my infant, something I had never wanted to do. I still had to cope with a baby on post after day care hours were over, and study, and I was desperately unhappy. I was too far in to leave, though I wish I had.
I remember one time there was a Garrison Mission and still being on post at 1am with a small baby screaming, trying to pass a White Glove inspection. This went on for a week. My baby was getting sick very often, running fevers and hardly sleeping. I decided I had to leave, but was handled to stay with reduced hours, ie I went home at night. Immediately my son started to sleep and wasn’t so sick. My husband was able to start minding him sometimes, and that reduced the pressure on me.
However one day my toddler pulled a cup of hot tea onto his arm and face while I was distracted on post, resulting in a 3 day stay in the Hospital Burns unit. I was devastated and became even more highly stressed for his safety and our future.
Yet again I was persuaded to stay, supposedly for the greatest good. I had been demoted from AG Comm as it was decided my past blow from Saint Hill made me a security risk. I was made Project I/C for a huge international event, which took 5 months to organise. I was pregnant again, yet managed to pull it off with a lot of blood, sweat and tears. I was a physical and emotional wreck and started to have false labour pains and was my doctor was very concerned about my physical state. I finally decided that the health of both my children and myself was more important than anything else. Woohoo for a flash of sanity!
I CSW’d for a LOA at 5 months into my pregnancy, in 1982. The result was an SRA (Severe Reality Adjustment) from Elaine Allen I had seen delivered to other people, and had never envisioned being on the receiving end of. I was screamed at and reduced to rubble by someone who I had shared a great deal of my life with, that I had shared a house and ‘family’ life with…. I couldn’t believe that she could do that. Yet at the same time I sort of felt myself become whole again, it’s hard to explain. I took back my integrity, despite it being one of the hardest things I have ever done – and walked out the door to become a real mother. I had a healthy baby, and another a couple of years later and for the next few years enjoyed doing that, I was of course shunned and isolated by scientologists, so I created my own life outside the insanity of staff. I found that I received help and support from normal people, and that ‘society’ actually wanted to help new mothers!
1988/90 – now
I still felt I was a scientologist, even if ‘inactive field’. One day I would get back on my Bridge, one day I would find the answers to life that had been promised. After all my whole family were scientologists too (even if mostly inactive) – and that was how we tackled life. I was 2nd generation, and there was a third generation to think about.
I was approached to help start the Phoenix school in Melbourne (later renamed Yarralinda), something that hadn’t ever been accomplished despite many attempts, even by Ivis Bolger. It appealed to me because I wanted my kids away from the threat of the drug society in public schools, and for them to have study tech. The woman who was doing the set-up was a declared PTS Type III in the past, she had been kidnapped and babysat etc but that is another story. She wanted a school both for her own daughter, and for other scientology kids and knew that she faced enormous challenges in ‘making it go right’. She was right. She knew I was more acceptable to the field, so wanted me to be the public face while she worked behind the scenes doing what was needed.
She did manage to set up the school, jumped the hoops to get the school’s legal requirements almost complete, had a building, and had children and classes organised. It was also a mad shambles. The third partying started and a great deal of my time and energy became handling the daily dramas about that. Even now, many years later, I don’t want to think of it. The ceasless KRs, gossip, third party, outright betrayal and the clique mentality is enough to make you want to throw up. Sickening.
The outcome was that the woman who started it finally took off, as she had always planned to do, knowing what was the likely scenario. ABLE (or Applied Scholastics, can’t remember which it was then) had of course become involved, wanting their cut. Represented by Martin Bentley, ABLE sided with one set of parents, as the school was divided down the middle. The other set of parents – me included, left and I put my children back in a normal public school.
During this period I became very ill. What had started as a swollen knee turned into a raging deterioration of all major joints in my body. I saw many different doctors, specialists, chiropractors, naturopaths and no-one could diagnose or help with what was happening. I lost a great deal of weight and had sometimes unbearable pain in my hips particularly, but also knees, ankles, elbows and jaw. About the only thing I could eat was peanut butter sandwiches, and after about 6 months my legs actually started to turn outwards. I carried a little stool to sit on as I could barely walk, suffered fevers and nausea so badly I thought I was dying. Now this was while I was trying to help set up a school! As long as I was there every day, no-one seemed to care, and being a ‘make-it-go-right” sort of person, I just kept on. I remember taking a walk with Martin late one night, to discuss the school situation, in such agony I thought I would fall down in the street. He didn’t seem to notice.
It was the greatest relief to walk away from it all. The fallout continued for some months and the woman who started the school was Comm Evd and found guilty of everything under the sun except starting a Scn school! I owe her no favours, but that does not sit well with me. There were copies of KR’s a foot high.
I finally found a doctor who didn’t just dismiss me, and X rays showed that my hips had turned in their sockets by 20 degrees. Deterioration of the joints at this speed was unheard of – he arranged for immediate hip replacements and medication to arrest the disease. It took a few years of constant medical attention, and almost dying in surgery but I finally recovered enough to walk again. (I still have this disease, unclassifiable to the medical profession and therefore being “chronically ill” was labelled PTS. The idea that something like this may have a genetic basis is never considered.)
Yes, there were attempted recoveries of me as a scientologist over the next decade. A few times I even believed the “it’s all different now” and attempted to get back on my “Bridge” but it always failed. Usually due to me not having the money of course! Once it failed because I went to the AO for a recovery auditing cycle and it was decided that a PC folder of mine that had been burnt in the Melbourne fire had to be reconstructed piece by piece with tweezers and a magnifying glass! That took a week, with me sitting in the hallway waiting for a session, not knowing this was going on and leaving my young children 500km away very unhappily waiting for me to come home. After a week I developed a migraine and I remember taking the decision – painkiller or not. I took the painkiller. I finally faced the fact that no-one cared about ME, only the stat I represented. I got the next flight home and that was my last attempt to ever try again.
I pretended for the next few years but finally in 2002 I read the OT levels online. I was so scared I would get sick, as we had been warned of so often, but I didn’t – I laughed! Then I got angry that such a con should exist, that people’s lives are dictated by a man who really did not care for individuals at all.
Although I was recently told to stop “attacking her religion” by a family member because I posted here .... it was my “religion” too (though I know that term is a sham and was there when it was introduced), and my experiences. I will not be silenced or told who I can and cannot communicate to, with and about. I pray for the day it is truly the same for her.
Life after scientology is truly liberating.
---------------------
Mish mash memories of Saint Hill
Being on Reception and having a woman run in screaming that her husband had just killed himself. I can’t remember who it was or what happened other than her wanting a GO person to make it right, and her extreme distress.
Being locked in a tent after The Battle of Britain event where no-one was allowed to leave until they had signed up for their next level. The angry queue of people waiting to get out that door!
The secrecy.
Things that had to be done yesterday.
The drama of flaps to be handled.
Not having anything you had produced with blood sweat and tears taken into account or remembered beyond the time it happened.
Being so very tired, and often hungry.
Being stressed about finding a lift into EG as it was an awfully long walk. I was once stopped by the police walking down that road, a young female late at night. They gave me a lift. Most of the time you waited in the car park until someone took you home, or close by. I remember the crowding of many more students into cars than was safe, especially when it was snowing. Getting a lift with a US celebrity in his wonderful Lotus, what a trip that was!
1978 - 1982
In 1978 I returned to Australia, though a different city. As I had blown staff in the past I was ineligible to join again, without a lot of ammends anyway. So I started the amends. This consisted of volunteer work for CCHR and the local Class 4 org GO, mostly typing as it was something I could do efficiently, and recruiting, which I was lousy at.
I married a fellow staff member and was pregnant in 1979. The CCHR work was mostly done in a tin shed in the backyard, and during the summer months this was hell on earth with temperatures over 40C. I did that for a year and a half, did my Student Hat and petitioned to be able to join staff, and it was OK’d, so joined the GO, pending final security clearance.
In April 1980 the Melbourne org was burnt down, which was a tremendous shock. It then operated from 5 different houses for quite some time. My memory of that time is one of great team spirit and making things go right, against the odds. “Rocky” was our theme – it was us against ASIO and the SPs out there who were trying to take us down! There were some good people there. We all finally moved into new org premises in the city.
I worked until the day my baby was born and luckily was granted 5 weeks maternity leave! I had a wonderful homebirth, and it was just in time to be announced at Friday muster. (Staff actually cared about each other then. ) My baby rarely slept more than a few hours at a time and became very ill when he was a few weeks old. I coped as best I could and returned to post to find there was a big flap with everyone in the GO being blasted as DB shits and having to M4 Simon Bolivar – including me!! I remember feeling really sick, holding a newborn baby late into the night trying to get checked out.
With both of us on staff, the only way we survived was my husband moonlighting, as most often there was no pay or something ridiculous like $5 a week. I was allowed to bring my baby on post with me for a short time, and although I know now I was lucky to have time with him, it was extremely difficult. There was no running water or facilities and trying to keep him quiet was almost impossible. I was allowed to work only days during those months but then was ordered to be on post for the fulltime schedule, which was 9am – 10.30pm with Sunday afternoon off. I had no support of any kind and the stress was so great that my husband blew in order for us to survive. He was almost expelled at this point but managed somehow to come back part time. I found day care for my infant, something I had never wanted to do. I still had to cope with a baby on post after day care hours were over, and study, and I was desperately unhappy. I was too far in to leave, though I wish I had.
I remember one time there was a Garrison Mission and still being on post at 1am with a small baby screaming, trying to pass a White Glove inspection. This went on for a week. My baby was getting sick very often, running fevers and hardly sleeping. I decided I had to leave, but was handled to stay with reduced hours, ie I went home at night. Immediately my son started to sleep and wasn’t so sick. My husband was able to start minding him sometimes, and that reduced the pressure on me.
However one day my toddler pulled a cup of hot tea onto his arm and face while I was distracted on post, resulting in a 3 day stay in the Hospital Burns unit. I was devastated and became even more highly stressed for his safety and our future.
Yet again I was persuaded to stay, supposedly for the greatest good. I had been demoted from AG Comm as it was decided my past blow from Saint Hill made me a security risk. I was made Project I/C for a huge international event, which took 5 months to organise. I was pregnant again, yet managed to pull it off with a lot of blood, sweat and tears. I was a physical and emotional wreck and started to have false labour pains and was my doctor was very concerned about my physical state. I finally decided that the health of both my children and myself was more important than anything else. Woohoo for a flash of sanity!
I CSW’d for a LOA at 5 months into my pregnancy, in 1982. The result was an SRA (Severe Reality Adjustment) from Elaine Allen I had seen delivered to other people, and had never envisioned being on the receiving end of. I was screamed at and reduced to rubble by someone who I had shared a great deal of my life with, that I had shared a house and ‘family’ life with…. I couldn’t believe that she could do that. Yet at the same time I sort of felt myself become whole again, it’s hard to explain. I took back my integrity, despite it being one of the hardest things I have ever done – and walked out the door to become a real mother. I had a healthy baby, and another a couple of years later and for the next few years enjoyed doing that, I was of course shunned and isolated by scientologists, so I created my own life outside the insanity of staff. I found that I received help and support from normal people, and that ‘society’ actually wanted to help new mothers!
1988/90 – now
I still felt I was a scientologist, even if ‘inactive field’. One day I would get back on my Bridge, one day I would find the answers to life that had been promised. After all my whole family were scientologists too (even if mostly inactive) – and that was how we tackled life. I was 2nd generation, and there was a third generation to think about.
I was approached to help start the Phoenix school in Melbourne (later renamed Yarralinda), something that hadn’t ever been accomplished despite many attempts, even by Ivis Bolger. It appealed to me because I wanted my kids away from the threat of the drug society in public schools, and for them to have study tech. The woman who was doing the set-up was a declared PTS Type III in the past, she had been kidnapped and babysat etc but that is another story. She wanted a school both for her own daughter, and for other scientology kids and knew that she faced enormous challenges in ‘making it go right’. She was right. She knew I was more acceptable to the field, so wanted me to be the public face while she worked behind the scenes doing what was needed.
She did manage to set up the school, jumped the hoops to get the school’s legal requirements almost complete, had a building, and had children and classes organised. It was also a mad shambles. The third partying started and a great deal of my time and energy became handling the daily dramas about that. Even now, many years later, I don’t want to think of it. The ceasless KRs, gossip, third party, outright betrayal and the clique mentality is enough to make you want to throw up. Sickening.
The outcome was that the woman who started it finally took off, as she had always planned to do, knowing what was the likely scenario. ABLE (or Applied Scholastics, can’t remember which it was then) had of course become involved, wanting their cut. Represented by Martin Bentley, ABLE sided with one set of parents, as the school was divided down the middle. The other set of parents – me included, left and I put my children back in a normal public school.
During this period I became very ill. What had started as a swollen knee turned into a raging deterioration of all major joints in my body. I saw many different doctors, specialists, chiropractors, naturopaths and no-one could diagnose or help with what was happening. I lost a great deal of weight and had sometimes unbearable pain in my hips particularly, but also knees, ankles, elbows and jaw. About the only thing I could eat was peanut butter sandwiches, and after about 6 months my legs actually started to turn outwards. I carried a little stool to sit on as I could barely walk, suffered fevers and nausea so badly I thought I was dying. Now this was while I was trying to help set up a school! As long as I was there every day, no-one seemed to care, and being a ‘make-it-go-right” sort of person, I just kept on. I remember taking a walk with Martin late one night, to discuss the school situation, in such agony I thought I would fall down in the street. He didn’t seem to notice.
It was the greatest relief to walk away from it all. The fallout continued for some months and the woman who started the school was Comm Evd and found guilty of everything under the sun except starting a Scn school! I owe her no favours, but that does not sit well with me. There were copies of KR’s a foot high.
I finally found a doctor who didn’t just dismiss me, and X rays showed that my hips had turned in their sockets by 20 degrees. Deterioration of the joints at this speed was unheard of – he arranged for immediate hip replacements and medication to arrest the disease. It took a few years of constant medical attention, and almost dying in surgery but I finally recovered enough to walk again. (I still have this disease, unclassifiable to the medical profession and therefore being “chronically ill” was labelled PTS. The idea that something like this may have a genetic basis is never considered.)
Yes, there were attempted recoveries of me as a scientologist over the next decade. A few times I even believed the “it’s all different now” and attempted to get back on my “Bridge” but it always failed. Usually due to me not having the money of course! Once it failed because I went to the AO for a recovery auditing cycle and it was decided that a PC folder of mine that had been burnt in the Melbourne fire had to be reconstructed piece by piece with tweezers and a magnifying glass! That took a week, with me sitting in the hallway waiting for a session, not knowing this was going on and leaving my young children 500km away very unhappily waiting for me to come home. After a week I developed a migraine and I remember taking the decision – painkiller or not. I took the painkiller. I finally faced the fact that no-one cared about ME, only the stat I represented. I got the next flight home and that was my last attempt to ever try again.
I pretended for the next few years but finally in 2002 I read the OT levels online. I was so scared I would get sick, as we had been warned of so often, but I didn’t – I laughed! Then I got angry that such a con should exist, that people’s lives are dictated by a man who really did not care for individuals at all.
Although I was recently told to stop “attacking her religion” by a family member because I posted here .... it was my “religion” too (though I know that term is a sham and was there when it was introduced), and my experiences. I will not be silenced or told who I can and cannot communicate to, with and about. I pray for the day it is truly the same for her.
Life after scientology is truly liberating.
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> 
Yeah, she does have a way with words, doesn't she? Reading her story gave me hope, love courage, and even some of my lost emotions back... and so much more.....
FTS! 
