Cult A Love Story Ten Years Inside A Canadian Cult And The Subsequent Long Road Of Recovery

For fans of Educated, Captive, and Leah Remini's Troublemaker comes the gripping true-life story of one young woman's accidental journey into a cult. And her escape a decade later. It's rarely obvious when a group is a cult. Most cults don't advertise themselves as such: they are groups of people who look and act just like you and me. Not dangerous. Not deranged. At least, not at first. The slide toward complete control of your personality, your thoughts, and your life is slow and virtually unnoticeable. Until it's too late. Cult, A Love Story has been studied in university classrooms, featured in an audio documentary and on podcasts, and read by cult survivors and their families all over the world, from remote British Columbia, Canada to Australia, Europe, the Middle East and beyond. In this award-winning memoir, Alexandra Amor shines a light on cults so that others might learn from her heartbreaking experience. Amor gracefully and sensitively explains how ordinary and intelligent people get seduced into joining cults, why they stay despite the emotional and psychological abuse, and what the long process of recovery looks like once someone leaves a cult. Amor's transparency about her decade-long involvement with a Vancouver, Canada cult makes this powerful and gripping book an excellent resource for those wanting to know more about how the mind control of a high demand spiritual or religious group works. In this page-turning, personal memoir you will learn: - how normal, intelligent people can, without knowing what's happening, get sucked into a cult's grip - why it's so very difficult for those in high demand groups (cults) to leave - how to evaluate whether a group you belong to is a cult - what the recovery period after a cult looks like - resources and recommendations if you know someone in a cult, or if you are in recovery from a cult yourself "This excellent memoir reveals how a charismatic, manipulative spirit medium can use love for God and neighbor as a hook to drag a small group of devotees into her cynical web of impossible goals for self-perfection. After a heroic struggle for insight, Alexandra Amor was one of the cult members who broke the abusive spell." Joesph Szimhart, Cult Information Specialist

Think you could never join a cult? Think again.Cults thrive on secrecy, isolation, deception, and manipulation as they coerce even worldly and intelligent people into their cruel grip. In this award-winning memoir, Alexandra Amor shines a light on cults so that others might learn from her heartbreaking experience. Amor gracefully and sensitively explains how ordinary and intelligent people get seduced into joining cults, why they stay despite the emotional and psychological abuse, and what the long process of recovery looks like once someone leaves a cult.Amor's transparency about her decade-long involvement with a Vancouver, Canada cult makes this powerful and gripping book an excellent resource for those wanting to know more about how the mind control of a high demand spiritual or religious group works."This excellent memoir reveals how a charismatic, manipulative spirit medium can use love for God and neighbor as a hook to drag a small group of devotees into her cynical web of impossible goals for self-perfection. After a heroic struggle for insight, Alexandra Amor was one of the cult members who broke the abusive spell."Joesph Szimhart, Cult Information SpecialistKnowledge is power. Buy this chilling memoir today and educate yourself about how cults work.

For fans of Educated, Captive, and Beyond Belief comes the gripping true-life story of one young woman's accidental journey into a cult. And her escape a decade later. It's rarely obvious when a group is a cult. Most cults don't advertise themselves as such: they are groups of people who look and act just like you and me. Not dangerous. Not deranged. At least, not at first. The slide toward complete control of your personality, your thoughts, and your life is slow and virtually unnoticeable. Until it's too late. In this award-winning memoir, Alexandra Amor shines a light on cults so that others might learn from her heartbreaking experience. Amor gracefully and sensitively explains how ordinary and intelligent people get seduced into joining cults, why they stay despite the emotional and psychological abuse, and what the long process of recovery looks like once someone leaves a cult. Amor's transparency about her decade-long involvement with a Vancouver, Canada cult makes this powerful and gripping book an excellent resource for those wanting to know more about how the mind control of a high demand spiritual or religious group works. In this page-turning, personal memoir you will learn: how normal, intelligent people can, without knowing what's happening, get sucked into a cult's grip why it's so very difficult for those in high demand groups (cults) to leave how to evaluate whether a group you belong to is a cult what the recovery period after a cult looks like resources and recommendations if you know someone in a cult, or if you are in recovery from a cult yourself "This excellent memoir reveals how a charismatic, manipulative spirit medium can use love for God and neighbor as a hook to drag a small group of devotees into her cynical web of impossible goals for self-perfection. After a heroic struggle for insight, Alexandra Amor was one of the cult members who broke the abusive spell." Joesph Szimhart, Cult Information Specialist Knowledge is power. Buy this chilling memoir today and educate yourself about how cults work.

Do you understand what your food cravings are trying to tell you? Are you dealing with an unwanted overeating or binge-eating habit? Have you tried to curb your cravings with diets and restrictive eating plans, only to fail again and again? Consider this: the reason diets haven’t worked for you is that they’re trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. What if your cravings are trying to communicate something important? And what if the way to resolve them is to listen what they have to say? Contrary to what most modern self-help and dieting approaches say, cravings are not a broken part of you that needs to be fixed. The Secret Language of Cravings will help to teach you what those cravings are trying to tell you, and how they are attempting to alert you to your perfect human design. For 30+ years, author Alexandra Amor searched for answers about why she had a persistent overeating habit. All the self-help books she read, all the classes she took, all the therapy she had and all the diets she tried didn’t even begin to solve the problem. In fact, despite all that work and effort, her cravings got worse. Then in 2017, she stumbled across a little-known field of psychology that points us away from the pathologization of our human experience and instead looks toward our innate well-being and perfect human design. After decades of trying to suppress, manage, and dominate her food cravings, Amor instead began to listen to them, and to speak their language. With this, everything changed. If you’d like to resolve your overeating or binge-eating habit once and for all, without willpower or white knuckles, this book will help you do that by teaching you to understand the secret language of cravings.

When a loved one dies we mourn our loss. We take comfort in the rituals that mark the passing, and we turn to those around us for support. But what happens when there is no closure, when a family member or a friend who may be still alive is lost to us nonetheless? How, for example, does the mother whose soldier son is missing in action, or the family of an Alzheimer's patient who is suffering from severe dementia, deal with the uncertainty surrounding this kind of loss? In this sensitive and lucid account, Pauline Boss explains that, all too often, those confronted with such ambiguous loss fluctuate between hope and hopelessness. Suffered too long, these emotions can deaden feeling and make it impossible for people to move on with their lives. Yet the central message of this book is that they can move on. Drawing on her research and clinical experience, Boss suggests strategies that can cushion the pain and help families come to terms with their grief. Her work features the heartening narratives of those who cope with ambiguous loss and manage to leave their sadness behind, including those who have lost family members to divorce, immigration, adoption, chronic mental illness, and brain injury. With its message of hope, this eloquent book offers guidance and understanding to those struggling to regain their lives. Table of Contents: 1. Frozen Grief 2. Leaving without Goodbye 3. Goodbye without Leaving 4. Mixed Emotions 5. Ups and Downs 6. The Family Gamble 7. The Turning Point 8. Making Sense out of Ambiguity 9. The Benefit of a Doubt Notes Acknowledgments Reviews of this book: You will find yourself thinking about the issues discussed in this book long after you put it down and perhaps wishing you had extra copies for friends and family members who might benefit from knowing that their sorrows are not unique...This book's value lies in its giving a name to a force many of us will confront--sadly, more than once--and providing personal stories based on 20 years of interviews and research. --Pamela Gerhardt, Washington Post Reviews of this book: A compassionate exploration of the effects of ambiguous loss and how those experiencing it handle this most devastating of losses ... Boss's approach is to encourage families to talk together, to reach a consensus about how to mourn that which has been lost and how to celebrate that which remains. Her simple stories of families doing just that contain lessons for all. Insightful, practical, and refreshingly free of psychobabble. --Kirkus Review Reviews of this book: Engagingly written and richly rewarding, this title presents what Boss has learned from many years of treating individuals and families suffering from uncertain or incomplete loss...The obvious depth of the author's understanding of sufferers of ambiguous loss and the facility with which she communicates that understanding make this a book to be recommended. --R. R. Cornellius, Choice Reviews of this book: Written for a wide readership, the concepts of ambiguous loss take immediate form through the many provocative examples and stories Boss includes, All readers will find stories with which they will relate...Sensitive, grounded and practical, this book should, in my estimation, be required reading for family practitioners. --Ted Bowman, Family Forum Reviews of this book: Dr. Boss describes [the] all-too-common phenomenon [of unresolved grief] as resulting from either of two circumstances: when the lost person is still physically present but emotionally absent or when the lost person is physically absent but still emotionally present. In addition to senility, physical presence but psychological absence may result, for example, when a person is suffering from a serious mental disorder like schizophrenia or depression or debilitating neurological damage from an accident or severe stroke, when a person abuses drugs or alcohol, when a child is autistic or when a spouse is a workaholic who is not really 'there' even when he or she is at home...Cases of physical absence with continuing psychological presence typically occur when a soldier is missing in action, when a child disappears and is not found, when a former lover or spouse is still very much missed, when a child 'loses' a parent to divorce or when people are separated from their loved ones by immigration...Professionals familiar with Dr. Boss's work emphasised that people suffering from ambiguous loss were not mentally ill, but were just stuck and needed help getting past the barrier or unresolved grief so that they could get on with their lives. --Asian Age Combining her talents as a compassionate family therapist and a creative researcher, Pauline Boss eloquently shows the many and complex ways that people can cope with the inevitable losses in contemporary family life. A wise book, and certain to become a classic. --Constance R. Ahrons, author of The Good Divorce A powerful and healing book. Families experiencing ambiguous loss will find strategies for seeing what aspects of their loved ones remain, and for understanding and grieving what they have lost. Pauline Boss offers us both insight and clarity. --Kathy Weingarten, Ph.D, The Family Institute of Cambridge, Harvard Medical School

'A rare, highly detailed insider account of a "family" designed to be shut off from the world. And of Morgan, a ferocious young girl who railed hard against it.' Sunday Times 'This is an unflinching and courageous memoir, exposing one of the world's most infamous cults. It's an inspiring, if at times upsetting, read.' Daily Express My name is Faith Morgan and I was born into the infamous Children of God cult, or 'The Family' as it came to be known. At age 19 I managed to escape and entered a world in which I had to learn how to live again. Rebel is my story. My teenage diary helps piece the story of my travels in Costa Rica, India, Greece, Mexico, and London together. Of the communes, the 'missions', the friendships and the relationships. And of course, my enduring faith: in Jesus, in the Prophet (cult leader David Berg), and in the inevitability of the coming end times, which I fully believed would arrive. But beyond the brainwashing and mistreatment is the extraordinary story of my family and the adventures of my early life which help me understand what happened and why, so it doesn't happen to others. The spirit of that defiant girl who escaped is still in there somewhere, and through telling my story I wish to look into the eyes of 'evil', with its many faces so I can send it on its way.

Mass weddings. Matching ceremonies where people meet their future spouses for the first time. Desperate flower-sellers approaching bar customers late at night. Isolated farms where young men and women are rapidly transformed into fanatical devotees of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon. All these are well-known aspects of life in the cult known as the Unification Church, often called the "Moonies". In Heartbreak and Rage: Ten Years Under Sun Myung Moon, a Cult Survivor's Memoir, K. Gordon Neufeld recalls his own participation in all of these events in a powerful and engrossing, and occasionally wistful and tender, memoir. In Part Three, Neufeld recounts the dilemma he finds himself in after two years of study at the Unification Theological Seminary. For the first time in his cult life, he no longer feels he must obey the leaders automatically. Instead, he believes the cult's failure to achieve greater success is precisely because the cult leaders require members to repress their feelings. Neufeld resolves to be an empathetic listener and to encourage other members to express their real feelings; in short, he determines to justify his existence by love, and not by works. As he wrestles with his dilemma, he writes his thoughts down in a small diary which he keeps while in Boston. Upon his return to the Unification Theological Seminary in September, he is abruptly sent away by the Seminary leaders. Neufeld opts to go to Los Angeles to undergo Primal Therapy, a radical treatment he had investigated before he joined the Unification Church. While working with other cult members, he sets aside money for the treatment. However, during this waiting time, he is called to a gathering of members in New York, where Moon matches him up to a woman he had never met, who is now to become his eternal spouse. Yet Moon has not yet selected a date for the actual wedding ceremony, so in the interim, all the matched members must remain celibate. In Neufeld's case, he must get to know his fiancée by correspondence only, since she lives in England and Scotland. Once back in Los Angeles, Neufeld returns to his plans to undergo Primal Therapy. As time goes on, he realizes that his fiancée is deeply troubled and is at risk of leaving the cult, so he drops his therapy in order to travel to see her. There, he quickly falls in love with her. Yet his situation is impossible: the cult will not permit him to live with his new love, and she must remain in England, while he must return to Los Angeles. One year later, Neufeld is again abruptly called to attend a cult mass wedding ceremony at Madison Square Garden in New York; yet, even after the wedding ceremony, he must continue to remain celibate and to wait at least three more years before he can live with his beloved. Gradually, as his financial position becomes more and more difficult, and as his fiancée again pleads with him to visit her, Neufeld concludes that he must abandon his Primal Therapy treatment. Later, in a desperate effort to raise money to visit his fiancée, he returns to his parents' home in Canada, so he can work legally. During his time in Calgary, Neufeld remains loyal to Moon, but he finds himself in a city where no other Unification Church members live. But before he can afford the trip overseas to see his fiancée, she writes him to tell him it is over. Now, Neufeld must decide whether to remain in the cult, or to leave.