Yesterday, I finished Ali Millar’s harrowing and brilliantly-written review of her time as an Jehovah’s Witness, The Last Days. I’ve wanted to read it ever since it came out in the summer, and I’m glad that I’ve finally got round to it. Reading about the experiences of other people who have been in cults has proven a cathartic exercise and something which helps me to process my own short-lived experience of being in a cult.
Millar describes growing up in Scotland to a dysfunctional family and a mother who was never fully present in their lives, torn between her adventures with strange men and her commitment to being one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. It was a hellish, repressive childhood and adolescence, which Millar captures in beautiful, heart-wrenching, matter-of-fact prose. The run-on sentences and the spellbinding poetry of her writing reminds me of James Joyce – something I have in fact told her directly via Twitter. Millar describes her double life as she blossomed into an adventurous young woman – her sexual escapades with boys and her drinking bouts with worldly friends, her moments of soul-crushing guilt after thinking or doing something ‘sinful’, her terror of Armageddon. Reading it I could not help but shake my head in disgust. How could a mother behave in the way her mother did? How could such monstrous things be taught to children? How could anyone raise their child in this way? I found points of similarity with my Christian fundamentalist upbringing, which thankfully was nowhere near as extreme as Millar’s unbelievably traumatic childhood.
One of the most fascinating aspects of her story is the dynamic between her devout mother and her ‘worldly’ grandparents, who disapproved of her lifestyle but nevertheless remained a part of their lives. They provided a much-needed counterbalance to her oppressive upbringing. Millar describes the awful scene when they went over to her grandparents’ place on one occasion, and her mother detected what she believed to be blood in the meat that they had been served. Consumption of blood is a sin in the JW faith, so the mother subsequently made a scene and they left the dinner abruptly. This would be funny, if it were not so disgusting and traumatic for the young Millar.
Reading the book, I felt a massive amount of protectiveness towards Millar. I wished I could have gone back in time as a grown man, stepped into her life and helped her avoid so much suffering. When she describes her meeting her first husband Marc, I was filled with disgust at how this man was treating her – doing everything in his power to degrade her and crush her self-esteem to turn her into a pliable wife, even before they were married. Domestic abuse in action. Something my own aunt went through and which I went through as a member of a Trotskyist cult. I rejoiced whenever she rebelled and did something ‘worldly’, like going out with her German friend Dietrich and other people that led her astray, only to come back to a furious husband. Her adultery ultimately leads her to be disfellowshipped, and beyond that, to freedom for herself and her daughter. It is a bittersweet freedom, and one which costs her her mother and sister, and all her JW friends and relations, who all disfellowship her.
I really identified with Millar’s use of literature and music as a means of escape from her situation. Just as I, too, have turned to art in order to overcome the miserable legacy of being a member of the IMT, so Millar devoured D.H. Lawrence and Sylvia Plath and listened religiously to ‘worldly’ rock bands as a means of escape from her misery. Millar shows us how art is one of the most powerful means of fighting totalitarianism.
I was bowled over by Millar’s strength and bravery. Her determination to break free, to not end up like her mother, to rebuild her life and break the cycle of misery, moved me deeply. She is now doing something worthwhile with her life – writing for a living, which is one of my own ambitions. Every former cult member should read her story and reflect on its lessons. We can all recover from cultism and live authentic lives of freedom and creativity. I draw strength from her, and other survivors who have left cults.