The Bundys on Married with Children. They called those ‘toaster leavins.’

I am so sorry I have taken this long to reply, but I have been somewhere where there was no Internet. I cried today reading your pain.. I think you were very brave, and what a difficult decision you had to make to survive. I am afraid guilt is always part of a loss, death of a loved one always seems to have a “what if” attached. There is no way you can compare what you lived through and why you disconnected with the way those in the “church” are disconnecting from their families, theirs are because LRH says that is what they must do. It is not their survival that is under threat even if they have been so brainwashed as to believe it is. Bless you. You are very brave. Only goodness should be in your life now. Xx

On disconnecting from parents/children: I was never in. But years ago, when I was struggling to overcome a crack addiction and opiate use, my mother (who had been straight for ten years) began to drink again. She started to go pretty crazy, and I couldn’t take it and stay clean at the same time. I cut off contact with her for the sake of my sanity. The one time I tried to call her (on her birthday), I told her about being off morphine. She started asking me about my connections, and whether I could still get it (for her, not me); finally, she came straight out and asked, “And how much would be a lethal dose for a non-user?” I panicked, hung up on her, didn’t answer any of her calls back.
I started to get to a point where I felt solid enough in my recovery to try contacting her again. My dad advised me to wait until after Christmas because she was always particularly insane around the holidays. Ten days before Christmas, she had an alcohol-induced seizure at the top of her stairs, fell, broke her thigh, and stayed there on the floor, able to reach a phone, until alcohol withdrawal killed her a few days later.
The last time I spoke to her was the morphine conversation. In a life full of horrible mistakes I’ve done my best to correct, that is the only lingering, aching, bitter regret I have.
I essentially chose to disconnect from my mother. I did it myself; nobody ordered or encouraged me to. I did it for the best of reasons – she was very much in her illness and I wasn’t settled enough in my own attempt at non-illness to be able to handle it. But none of that changes the fact that because I refused all contact with her, I never got to even try to settle anything between us; I never got to say goodbye, and she died without having spoken to her only daughter in years.
This is the kind of thing disconnection can do – only it’s even worse than that, because you lose your parent, child, husband, wife, friend, etc., not because of a choice you make to save yourself, but because of an order you get from “on high”. And it’s so full of cognitive dissonance – if you’re clear, or OT, you’re supposed to have all these powers and protections against the awfulness of the world, and yet just being exposed to someone who has thought things that aren’t the approved message is SO dangerous to your immortal, protected self, that you have to cut your family out of your life, maybe forever. It’s like being ordered to cut a chunk of your soul out and throw it away, without any assurance that you’ll ever get it back, or even be able to replace it with something else.
I don’t have words for how sick it is.

LOL well now I know some PPD took some “gifts” from the $cilons! That does not surprise me in the least. Many of them are corrupt bullies with a badge AND they hate “protest” culture or citizens who know their rights and limits to police authority!

I had a very odd phone conversation with a police officer in Portland after the opening of the Ideal Org. He claimed that Mark Bunker himself decided to vacate the second floor stockroom of the Outdoor Store because (I am not making this up)– the windows were too dirty to get good video.

Oh yeah if you like that you should hear about the time PPD entered lower SE neighborhoods, took over 2 pawn shops, and paid tweekers and heroin addicts to steal, burglerize, and shoplift! In a 3 year period the PPD were responsible for the crime rate in this area of Portland shooting up 300%!!!!! I am not kidding or exaggerating!

And people wonder why I really dislike/distrust our city cops, especially the drug enforcement officers and those who go “undercover”. PPD is known to pay ANY rat $1,000 for information and they have even gone as far as putting CI’s on payroll and allowing them to addict and impregnante a minor (true story) AND pay for her abortion AND let the bastard go scott free!!!!
>(
XP

;D

“Songs from the Wood” was one of my first listening experiences with Tull and didn’t find it that all impressive lol My little brothers were Lord of the Ring and Harry Potter stoner dorks of the highest calibur and tried to get me into Tull. I just don’t get his music! Songs from the Wood is reminiscent of Leonard Nemoy’s “Ballad of Bilbo Baggins” IMO…..I don’t mind Dire Straights, but can’t say they are on my mp3 player or playlists. When it comes to classical music I like the old classical masters.