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My family was very active in the Focolare
movement. Finally all the members of my family
except me, who was rather hostile to it. It made
me feel very isolated and marginal, and sometimes even
judged, in my own family. I've been through a lot.
My parents became acquainted with the Focolare
movement the year I was born and took me to the
meetings of the movement as a child. I didn't like
it, but I had no choice. After a few years,
we settled close to a focolare and,
from that moment on, the movement invaded our
entire family-life. Everything, absolutely
everything, revolved around religion, the Church, the
pope, and above all the Focolaremovement, Chiara
and its ideal. Members of the movement passed by almost
every day. Meetings of the movement were sometimes held
in our house. Chiara was completely adored. But above
all, my father did not tolerate any thought that did not
correspond to Catholic thought,the precepts of the pope
or the ideology of Chiara. When we dared to evoke
another opinion or any doubt, he reacted violently, with
loud indignant cries and a sanctimonious speech imposing
on us what to believe. As he was regarded as a good and
respectable man on the outside, he became a true despot
in our family. No dialogue was possible. Finally, the
fear of expressing something he didn't like created a
permanent tension. We couldn't, we didn't
dare to express ourselves freely.
My parents had little contact with the outside world
outside of their professional life. They were almost
just people of the movement. The outside world was
presented as evil, especially by my father who saw evil
and temptation everywhere. As a teenager, all my
contacts with the outside world were controlled and,
very often, forbidden. We didn't have television. I was
not allowed to listen to music in my room. There were
only Catholic newspapers entering the house. My
readings, music, film outings or other
cultural, sports and leisure outings with classmates
were severely controlled, censored and, more often than
not, banned. The reasons for the refusals were not
always clear to me: the organization was not Catholic;
the activity, book or film was immoral; I could meet
boys; the host was a man... Finally, it took courage to
ask for an exit permit, as conflict and refusal were
almost systematic. I remember, among other things, and
for example, the virulent oppositions I encountered
when, at the age of 16, I wanted to go to a concert by
Alain Souchon and, at 22, enroll in an art school where
I was going to draw nudes. In both cases, the attitude
of my parents caused me such an internal conflict that I
was sick of it.
Sexuality was taboo. My parents didn't talk about it
at all, except in negative and reproachful
terms tinged with a lot of mystery. I
couldn't date boys. Love between man and
woman was not addressed, only the love of neighbor
and God. No flirtation allowed, pace boyfriend
before graduation, no pre-marriage sex, no
contraception. For my father, it was the woman who
led the man into carnal sin. Men, on the other
hand, were presented as poor being victims of
their instincts and can hardly control them. All
female coquettishness was therefore forbidden:
no miniskirt, no bikini, no clothing that could be
considered suggestive or provocative. Everything
about the body was suspicious, its pleasures doomed.
You couldn't hang out in the bathroom or in bed.
In our family, physical contact was avoided.
We didn't touch each other, we didn't kiss, we
didn't hug each other. There was no physical display
of affection.
There was little or no room for joy, lightness,
laughter, humor, spontaneity, self-deprecation.
Everything was taken seriously. The suffering
was magnified, it allowed us to live
'Jesus forsaken'. We were educated with,
continuously, Chiara's speeches that we must
renounce ourselves, sacrifice ourselves, deny
ourselves, ignore ourselves. You had to suppress
your emotions, always smile, pretend everything was
fine. It was God's will to be nothing, to want
nothing, to live only in the service of God and
others. We were just talking about love. But what
love when I didn't get room to exist? I was a
very happy little girl but, from my
teens,I felt more and more crushed by the dark
and heavy atmosphere that prevailed within our
family. I was withering.
In 1980, I was present in Rome at Genfest.
Just as the pope or Chiara (I don't know) shouted to
the cheering crowd of young people, "So you are all
ready to sacrifice for each other!" the crowd said
yes, gloating. And I thought, "No, I don't want to
sacrifice myself! I haven't experienced anything yet
and I'm not allowed anything. I have nothing to
sacrifice: I have already been sacrificed." Besides,
who has the right to ask a young person to sacrifice
himself?
So I wasn't in favor of the movement and as a
teenager I went less and less to meetings. At the
age of 14, I didn't want to go to Mass anymore. I
was considered by my parents to be in a state of
mortal sin, in perdition. The pressure was terrible.
I went back until I was 16, stopped again, went
back, and gave up for good when I was 18. But I felt
bad in my own family.
One day, at the age of 19, I made the 'effort' of
making pancakes on a Good Friday while my parents
and sister were at the service. I wanted to
celebrate the first night of the Easter holidays
happily with my family. The pancakes were
categorically refused because they had to fast. I
found myself alone with my preparations in the
kitchen, my parents having retreated to the living
room in an accusatory silence and my sister having
climbed into her room. I was devastated. And I was
wondering, is this God's will? I dreamed of a Jesus
knocking on the door, coming in and saying,
'Are there pancakes here?' and sitting down at my
table to share them with me. I felt rejected and
sacrificed by my parents in the name of their God,
their religion and their ideal.
At the age when teenage girls discover the world, I
lived locked up, deprived of all freedom, of all
autonomy, of any possibility of expression, in
absolute solitude, with parents for whom religion came
first. I always felt them in judgment, repression and
reproach. I had no one to confide in. I didn't dare
talk about what was going on at home to my
classmates,I was ashamed. And then I always thought
maybe I was the problem. I thought I was mean and
bad. I was doing everything I could to 'look'
normal. I thought I would run away but I was too shy
and the outside world scared me. I became an
insomniac. I woke up at night with panic attacks
because I felt like I had no power over my life, that
I had no place to exist. I felt like 'life' and lots
of opportunities were passing through my fingers. I
became depressed. I begged God to take my life back. I
thought about suicide, but I was afraid to go to
hell. I was afraid of going crazy. I felt something
was wrong, but was it me where my parents? I was in
total confusion. Not so long ago, a psychotherapist
told me that it was psychological abuse, that my
parents had done everything to prevent me from being
myself and that I had been lucky not to have fallen
into psychosis.
When I finally left the family home, I was very bad in
my skin. I didn't know who I was. I lived cut
off from myself, my body, my emotions, my
desires,my needs. I didn't dare trust what I
felt, express my opinion or
make a decision. I felt uncomfortable in
society, did not know how to behave and take my
place. I had never felt satisfied my
parents and felt their love for who I really
was. The outside world,the others, the men and the
sexuality scared me. As for God's love, I thought
I no longer deserved it. I lived in
infinite solitude, locked in myself.
Furious with my parents, I stayed several months
without contacting them. I had to do a lot of therapy,
but there's still irreversible damage. How do you live
when your wings have been cut off at an age when they
are being deployed? Feelings of anger, sadness and
guilt still regularly overwhelm me. More than the
Focolare movement, I blame my parents for allowing
themselves to indulge in such extreme and
destructive behaviors. I would have wanted only one
thing: to be able to be myself and receive their love,
their listening, their benevolence, their trust and
their support to discover the world and to flourish
serenely.
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