Your trilogy hit me hard because it was so accurate! I could feel the oppression and control once again.

I want you to know that I greatly admire the fact that you make readers aware that it was actually Elsa who was the sickest of the two parents. What she did to Ralph is exactly what my fundamentalist ex did to me! I was the one with bipolar symptoms because of what he was doing to me — over-control, hostility, criticism. I looked like the crazy one as I was breaking down while he sported a halo, always stayed cool, calm and collected and was always found in church Sunday morning and evening plus other times.

Ralph’s breakdown experience in Zermatt was similar to my own —- before I falsely assumed I was crazy and checked myself into a psych hospital. I assumed I was crazy because a traumatic surgery had triggered a part of my then-compartmentalized mind to open and suddenly —- like Ralph.

I had a completely different perspective on evangelicalism as well as the bible and god. During my intake process at the psych hospital, I told the chief of staff who was admitting me, that I realized I was crazy. His response was, “This is not where crazy people come, Diana, this is where their victims come! Your symptoms are about what has been done to you.”

I felt sorry for Ralph that he was unable to escape the evangelical fundamentalist environment because it is impossible to recover and stay in the environment that is destroying our and brain and methylating our genes. But I was thrilled Calvin ran as soon as he was able. I hope he was able to get the therapy he needed to get the fundamentalism out of himself. That, I found, is so much harder than leaving church and family.

This is a personal question. After reading your trilogy that struck me as a memoir series, I’ve wondered if any of your family were ever diagnosed bipolar or DID [dissociative identity disorder]? Since those were my pre-recovery diagnoses and common to evangelical fundamentalists and others indoctrinated into cults, I was not surprised that I thought I perceived both in Ralph and DID in Elsa. I didn’t think I could possibly hate the psychopathy of evangelical fundamentalism more than I already do, but Calvin, ratcheted up my utter contempt for that system because of what it does to innocent peoples’ lives and minds.

Thank you for telling it like it is. It is clear now, why I became even more ill as I read your mom’s books and tried to apply them in my life because I innocently and earnestly wanted to be the perfect Christian mother and wife. Instead, they unwittingly undermined the best parts of who I am and encouraged me to stay with a sociopath and that eventually caused me to lose everyone and everything I loved. Elsa’s illness and hypocrisy, helped destroy my life and family. Fortunately, I had the courage to check myself into a psych hospital and did all the therapy needed to rewire my brain and to free my mind from the psychopathy known as evangelical fundamentalism. No thanks to born-again Christians, I now live psychotropic drug free and no longer have the PTSD/Bipolar/or DID diagnoses. I hope that is true for Calvin also!

One of the many things that surprised me was reading that Calvin’s fundamentalist environment matched exactly what I’d experienced in the Assemblies of God —- minus the speaking in tongues BS —- including the same songs and all the apocalyptic stuff. I am SO glad that I followed my therapist’s advice and wrote out my own story before reading Calvin’s! My story is different but there is a lot of overlap due to the same indoctrination and upside down reality. I learned about L’Abri in Palo Alto in the early 1970s and had incorrectly assumed your parents were coming from a better place. So it was a shock to read it was the same system I had been born into and had been trying to escape. I think I now hate Elsa’s arrogance, uppityness, delusions and control and —- possibly narcissism —- as much as Ralph did when he let himself tell the truth in Zermatt. I came to respect Calvin’s grandmother as well as Calvin for trying to save her life. Not surprising, my evangelical family were ready, willing and able to let my grandmother die and would have if someone had not intervened on her behalf —- they wanted her money. Other evangelical family members claimed “your will not mine” while they let others in my family die prematurely.

Did you ever find time to read the copy of my memoir Shattered Diana? Like you, I am very aware that Trump has surrounded himself with a cabinet filled with “dominionist” Christians who are committed to destroying America.

Diana Lee, MA