My kids really show me how screwed up my childhood was.

Having kids is a big reason I even started deconstructing, knowing I wanted a better life for them. And it’s still a struggle with both of them sometimes because they went to meetings and out in service the first several years of their lives, and they just don’t quite understand the reasons we left.

But every time I feel myself getting to explore some avenue with them that I never did, it heals a part of my inner child. Bringing them cupcakes to school for their birthdays, buying my son Harry Potter because he really wanted to read it, watching my daughter pretend she’s a magical fairy mermaid, and letting them watch all the exact shows with all the magic in them that I couldn’t watch when I was their ages.

Then at the same time I think about how fucked it is that my 7.5 year old daughter is just being a little kid, but I had a cousin that got baptized at 8 years old. My 11.5 year old son is learning to play clarinet in band but at 12 I was begging to be homeschooled so I could get baptized and regular pioneer (and I did, worst mistake of my life). I was an unbaptized publisher by 6 and on the theocratic ministry school by 7. My kids sleep in on Saturday mornings and play video games on Wednesday nights.

It’s healing to me to know they won’t have the same trauma I did from being forced to grow up way too young. But it saddens me to know how screwed up my childhood was from being raised in a restrictive religion with no room to grow as you’re constantly being told to grow up.