CULT

A podcast about a cult seems safe… I’ll listen to that.

The experts on cults advise the terrified families on how to behave so that they don’t push their loved ones further into the grasp of the cult.
You don’t play into the cult’s brainwashing.
The loved ones are the enemy.
The cult is their savior.

Well that safe thing didn’t work out!
Every cell in my being is activated.

It is now so obvious how a fretting, anxious, pleading, screaming (or how ever I played it) Mother is no match for the euphoria of drugs.
If the drugs were a cult, a savior …I played right into their hands.

The extraordinary Nicola Benyahia lost her son to radicalization by ISIS.
Yes, my podcast choices are ill conceived for someone who is seeking a way to while away the hours before sleep descends.
Nicola speaks of the knife edge of living with that ‘don’t push them further in, further away’
She set up Families for Life to assist and support families and communities suffering from all forms of extremism.
Oh, the many insights that can come from a grieving Mother.
She too was blindsided.

How can we differentiate between teenage angst and whatever has gripped our child, before it’s too late?

For Nicola hindsight illuminates moments where she could have maybe made a difference.
Oh, Nicola, I feel you! and the cult families too.

Their words…
Grooming
Brainwashing
He made his own choice
Under the influence of an abusive relationship
Reprogramming
Ruined in 18 months
I didn’t see it
Incredibly difficult to get him out
Yet, he didn’t get desensitized towards his family

All these words I have written at some point.
Is my story, and Luke’s so different?

From the Mother’s point of view, the cults, the radicalization groups, the drugs and the culture that surrounds them, takes our children far from us and leaves us powerless.

The stigma judges our parenting.
We doubt ourselves and deep in our grief we ask…
What was the moment when things turned?