Getting Discomfortable with My Mother

Given my assertion that childhood is a cult, episode 25 is essentially an interview with the cult leader who brainwashed me: my mother! I may be biased, but I think it’s a pretty fascinating and pointed interview that provides some good context for my theories about shame.

After the bizarre children’s dreams from last week’s episode, my mother starts by recollecting an eerie “out of body” experience she had years ago involving yet more sleep paralysis and a posthumous visit by her then recently deceased father-in-law. Then my mother and I face off on whether my childhood was, in fact, a cult, and if so, what responsibility she has to ensure I get deprogrammed. We delve into her rebellious past, whether her own family was a “cult”, and whether she has succeeded in deprogramming herself from that cult. We also talk about why I wasn’t rebellious as a kid, why I think the childhood “trust” she put in me was a trick, and why she reacted poorly to my coming out as gay.

Corrections: at one point my mother says I came out as gay in my 30s, but I actually came out in my twenties, thank you very much! And later in the episode, she paraphrases a quote “by Gandhi” that is actually commonly attributed to the Buddha:

“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”

Except, ironically, it’s not actually what the Buddha said, according to Fake Buddha Quotes. Not to gloat, but the criticism I make in the show about the misquote’s appeal to “reason” is actually kind of addressed by the Buddha in the authentic quote it apparently bastardizes from the Kalama Sutta:

“Now, Kalamas, don’t go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, ‘This contemplative is our teacher.’ When you know for yourselves that, ‘These qualities are skillful; these qualities are blameless; these qualities are praised by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to welfare & to happiness’ — then you should enter & remain in them.”

Though unbeknownst to me, I think the above quote aptly summarizes how I decide upon and stress test my new “micro-ideologies“. (Okay, so maybe I am gloating…)

At one point my mother references the Duggar family, which I’d never heard of but with the help of Google I assume she was referring to the controversial family featured in the reality TV show 19 Kids and Counting.

This interview has been edited for clarity and interest.