The hardest part of deconstructing from one's family cult is having people tell you, "But you seemed to turn out just fine. Seems your family protected you from a lot.”

I’m almost thirty and I’m just learning some of the family secrets. The person who was my role model wasn’t the saint I believed him to be. While he preached attaining sinlessness he was secretly taking advantage of some of my cousins. I thank God I’d already began disentangling from the family traditions a couple years ago to convert to Catholicism. Otherwise I would be debilitated and utterly disillusioned right now.

Nevertheless, I am questioning everything. The family traditions. The things that made our life possible — and therefore made covering up the secrets possible. Supposedly our insular lifestyle was designed to protect us from the evils of the outside world. All it did was make us prey for the wolves who proudly bore the surname of “Lamb”.