By: Werner

Since I have been involved in helping, assisting and most importantly loving survivors, a world has opened up for me. At least, somewhat 'opened' because it is a world for me still full of mysteries and things I don't understand. Survivors we help still have to deal with plenty of the cult that still pulls them into 'that other world' through person parts. As if they always have to move between two worlds.
In conversation with Esther, I discovered that I myself carry a key when it comes to a 'double reality'.

Born in Groningen and raised in a Dutch family, I was exposed to several countries and cultures in my childhood. In particular, I lived in Italy for a long time (ten years), during a period when I was personally formed and grew from child to young adult. It was the time when I first made real friends, when I personally came to faith and had my first girlfriend.

The step I took at 18 to live and study independently in the Netherlands literally brought a 'culture shock' to me. Even though I was Dutch and now living in my own native country, I still tended to my (ex) friends, the 'way of life' and the climate of Italy for a long time. Everything was so different here and it felt safe for me to stay with the old. The fact that my parents and brothers still lived in Italy reinforced that yearning.  

So for years I led a 'double life' - with one leg in Dutch culture and one leg in Italian. But with two legs so far apart, you don't walk comfortably! I also gradually began to realise that I needed to close the chapter of my foreign childhood, to really feel at home in the Netherlands.
I eventually managed to shut down (or 'get out' of) Italy, but it took years!

I can imagine somewhere that survivors go through a similar process when stepping out of the world of cult. There is an inner conflict, between two essentially different cultures. They want to learn to choose this 'new world', the world outside the cult. At the same time, this is a world that is strange to them, so different from what they are used to... For example, it is a world where you are allowed to make mistakes and where there is grace, a world where people do not betray you at important moments and where you are allowed to form real friendships for the future. A world where freedom and recovery is possible with help from Yeshua and from other people around you. While this is positive, for survivors it is all new and highly uncertain. And yet - to get home to the 'normal' world - it is at the same time also necessary to close the book of the old life, life in the cult.

Through my personal experience, I can now imagine this struggle a little. I recognise the difficulty of the confrontation with the new, the unknown: I often avoided it too and preferred to stay in the 'safe, familiar'.

I also realise that for survivors it goes deeper and is more complicated than the difference between two countries (cultures), if only because they face extreme insecurity during the exit process - there is always that fear of the huge consequences because of getting out (e.g. extreme punishments). In addition, they face the enormous task of facing and processing very intense traumas and are in the middle of the struggle between good and evil.

It only gives me more respect for those survivors who - again and again - choose a new life, a life with the prospect of recovery and freedom. In doing so, they dare to let go of the familiar and choose to step into a whole new culture.