Search


	Podcast:		Other News
	Episode:		A cult took away my birthday. This woman got it back.
	Category:		Government & Organizations
	Duration:		00:09:56
	Publish Date:		2020-10-31 17:00:00
	Description:		This story originally aired on June 22, 2019. I was born into the Love Family, a culty commune that existed in Seattle in the 1970s and '80s. The family had a leader, a patriarch named Love, and 300 to 400 brothers and sisters. Their first names represented the virtues that Love saw in them — Purity, Solidity, Imagination, Devotion — and their last names were all Israel. I call it a culty commune because "commune" explains why people joined it, and everything positive they left with. "Cult" explains all the things that went wrong, and why it eventually ended. This story is about one of the things that went wrong. And the woman who made it right. I almost didn't have a birthday, because the Love Family didn't believe in them. People in the family didn't keep track of their ages, and they didn't celebrate birthdays. They didn't mark the years. They didn't even keep calendars. So, that’s how it happened that, on the day I was born, my parents had no idea what day it was. I almost didn't
	Total Play:		0