EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Have you ever stopped to think about yourself and your story? If someone were to write your memoir what would it say? We all seek some level of authenticity but have trouble removing the labels and finding our whole story. Welcome to Dropping In with Diane Dewey. In this program we’ll explore diverse stories on identity to help determine what is truly yours. Now here is your host Diane Dewey.

Diane: Welcome to the show everyone. Great that you’re with us for our guest today Linda A. Curtis author of the beautiful memoir called Shunned: How I Lost My Religion and Found Myself. It’s about identity which is our topic on Dropping In and we’ll talk about the truth as the Jehovah Witness religion calls its doctrine and asks this question. We will ask this question of Linda and of the doctrine. Does anyone have a corner on the truth? What was the impact on Linda, a young girl growing up near Portland, Oregon with the notion of being in possession of the truth? How did she ultimately break out of that rigid construct to find her own beliefs? Now years later how does she negotiate endings and closures that are inevitable in life, love, family and in being shunned?

It’s a spiritual journey, a quest for truth, an investigation into science and psychology and most of all Linda’s story provides a role model for individuation, creating an individual identity in a world that asks and sometimes even demands conformity to its principles. The poet David White said you must learn one thing. The world has made us to be free in. The world was made to be free in. Think about it. Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong he says.

I’m here to tell you that that constitutes a lot of giving up. As Linda’s story will show she’s figured and learned along the way how to navigate that path. Last week when we spoke to Kate Kaufmann we alluded to the Camino de Santiago, the Walk of St. James which is a trek followed by hikers and seekers for centuries. They’re often in pursuit of spiritual identity. So many people have taken this path to discover something about themselves or remind themselves of their own authenticity, that the way the Camino has taken on a kind of character or even an aura. Many emotional barriers dissolve for people while walking it and many people put themselves back together after a crisis by this track but the main thing is finding one’s truth. In a sense, in that sense we’re all on the virtual Camino.

We’re busy discovering for ourselves what works in our lives, piecing together our philosophies about how to live and creating our belief systems sometimes from scratch. What happens when an order like the Jehovah Witnesses proclaims that belief system for you? Linda Curtis is a survivor but in a larger sense we all are. We’ve shed many skins to come to where we are. With the lens of time, beliefs that we once hold dear may become archaic to be distilled for their usefulness at the time. Our evolutions are journeying even when
We’re asleep. At times the anecdote for trauma is to develop control through a rigid set of beliefs, control over events that have disappointed us, compartmentalizations and classifications and assumptions and labels for people who have hurt us, barriers to protect our tender hearts.

We target the outside by creating constructs and notions because we’re frustrated at having so little control sometimes. If other larger forces are at work are they benign or malicious? See how our determinations about that question are affected by the comfort we need to get by. Are we punished and limited in this lifetime? That’s probably what the Jehovah’s Witnesses might think. What is the role of joy and happiness then and if we’re repressed how can we fill our destinies and our potentials?

I’ve experienced excommunication from my family for beliefs we didn’t share in the form of a boyfriend my parents disapproved of and knowingly my biological identity continued to in school even as I became an adult adoptee. I’d become disowned and cut off from my parents for a boyfriend they didn’t approve of when I was age 18. My biological mother had become estranged from her family for having gotten pregnant with me when she was 19 and then surrendering me to the orphanage. It was the same similar time period in our lives. I stayed out of contact with my family for two years and after four years and having moved away from Stuttgart, my biological mother eventually left Germany altogether to live in the united states with her American soldier husband one state away from where I grew up in Philadelphia. She never looked back but she always looked for me.

The two years in exile with no communication was a great source of shame for me. My sense of self was shattered and withered. It was hard to develop a vision for the future when the foundation had been taken out when I was age 18. I deferred going to college. It was necessary to get my bearings, to see if I could live without parental approval. That was a test and in her book Shunned Linda Curtis will take you on her journey of self-development and rebirth as an individual on her own.

For the rest of my life I was aware that I sought autonomy, agency, and self-sufficiency. Working with my grandmother who worked for a catering company, we cooked together side by side in the kitchen sweltering, hot, tight spaces but understanding one another. Our need, my need to be alone and our need to be on our own. That I hadn’t been raised that way and it took a long time before I developed the skills of self-sufficiency. Women in particular may not be trained to think of themselves as standing on their own but we might have to do that one day and how do we create closure around our choices. Men too may face life alone.

We think of it as though life is one big initiation with new beginnings arising everywhere but the process of growing is about endings and sheddings and discernment. How do we cope with those necessary goodbyes, those closures that are needed to move on and gain traction? Toni Morrison said give up that that weighs you down so you can fly free but what is the skill set for letting go. Linda Curtis has become a life coach for an honorable closure and she will share with us her insights.

Since I grew up in the 1960s and 70s it was a badge of honor to rebel and it came as second nature to carve out my path but I also grew up in a conservative environment like she did and the need to please was just as much of a force though I didn’t want to admit it. Last week when we talked about Kate Kaufmann’s book Do You Have kids? Jen Hoffman who’s going to be a future guest with us wrote this about her trek on the Camino and I think it pertains to what we’re talking about today with Linda. Walking the Camino each time, she did it twice. It took Jen seven weeks. She put work on hold. She wrote I gave myself permission to leave behind every role I had to find out who I really was when I didn’t have any of those hats to wear. It was really unnerving because I like knowing what my responsibilities are. I’ve also always been other oriented, wanting to know what people expect of me so I can be whatever it is that they expect.

You’ll see in talking with Linda that she too was a person who really wanted to please. She wanted to succeed. She had a performance drive but there was a conflict and the conflict involved the belief system of her family, the Jehovah’s Witness and the truth, the cornering, the exclusive cornering of the truth. I really feel as though in Linda’s book and in my own memoir the urge to record and create a document of your story is so important to verify your inner world and your existence so that you can externalize your story and hold it up to the light. This need to validate through words and declarations is what led me to writing. Now that I’ve written my own memoir and received many awards for it I hope to help other writers not just tell their stories but prepare them correctly for publishing to a wider audience.

Check out my website TruNord Media. The true nord comes from the compass true north where I help to break down what’s working. Our editors will come along to revise and perfect your vision as a writer. We’ve got a book agent who brings your manuscript to fruition by getting it published. Linda Curtis and I share a wonderful publisher. She writes Press that champions the writing of unheard voices. At TruNord Media we’re here to help and we’re here to combine and complete the fold. I want to now turn to our guest. I know that we’ve talked about embracing different identities and acknowledging self-assigned labels if we want to survive the many other crises that face us but as a result in a larger sense in society some of the more traditional uninclusive religions and institutions seem to be breaking down. Paradigms of what’s acceptable are dissolving and realigning. Can the center still hold in a world or a religion where pejorative views still exist?

My narrative is that we’re all friends here and we want the same things to be witnessed, to be valued for who you are and to be upheld because we have some idea what’s best for ourselves. If we can learn respect for our own attitudes we can set ourselves free and do the same for others. That’s what Linda Curtis is here to do for us. We’re going to talk with her in a moment and I’m going to give you right now just a brief bio of Linda. You won’t want to miss our conversation.

Linda Curtis is an author teacher and keynote speaker whose life experience has granted her expertise on the subject of endings large and small they’ll tell us about them. As a champion of honorable closure which is a learned process, a dynamic part of our human experience she mentors individuals, executives and teams in transition supporting them from the unfinished business to dignified completion. She is a master mindfulness teacher at the Google-born Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute and an accredited ICF coach. Linda lives in Marin County, California. She’s a hiker, a yogini, an avid cyclist who loves celebrating life with friends and chosen family while enjoying the jammy notes of a fine cabernet. Learn more about Linda’s work At www.LindaACurtis.com.

I’m going to suggest to you that each one of us comes from a specific point of view that influences obviously the kinds of beliefs we hold. The monopolistic view of the truth was what struck me about Linda’s book Shunned: How I Lost My Religion and Found Myself but I understood that kind of thinking that there was only one way, one winner, one way to be because I had been named as you may know from other Dropping In episodes, I was named for Miss America, the year that my parents adopted me from an orphanage in Germany. I was named for Leanne Merriweather. The year that I was flown with my grandmother to America to unite with my adoptive parents.

Lee Ann Meriwether won the crown and I was dubbed Diane Lee as a compromised solution. Whenever I mentioned this coincidental moniker to other kids they only wanted to know one thing. Was this grandmother your real grandmother or was she your adoptive grandmother? They’d forget all about the fact that I’d had an impossible label attached to me that I might as well have been named Barbie Doll. I’d say she’s my real gr grandmother thinking how could she have been anything other than real when I had no biological relatives that I knew of. It was daunting to think I’d have to compete in life in each of these Miss America categories looks, personality, brains. There was no other way to get ahead but the motivation had implicitly been conveyed.

Apparently if I wanted to win at life I would have to try to measure up, to win approval in these categories and maybe if I was beautiful enough like them, like the contestants on Miss America I gain even love. From that on that point on I understood that no matter how much talent was in the room only one person could win that title. It was a daunting realization that there were only binary solutions. One winner who takes all and by extension one mother and father and maybe one way to believe. There was no use in my wondering where my biological parents quite might be. The notion of them was to be banished in favor of those who worthily and rightfully claim the title my parents. There would never be anyone other than them or so I thought.

In much the same way Linda grew up in a kind of monopolistic field. She began pioneering for the Jehovah’s Witnesses at age nine meaning knocking on door to door. You’re not going to want to miss her story of breaking out of this and becoming her own true self. Don’t go away. It’s Dropping In with Linda Curtis.

Become our friend on Facebook. Post your thoughts about our shows and network on our timeline. Visit facebook.com/VoiceAmerica.

Has your manuscript languished because you can’t find the direction it wants to take or have you lost the motivation to finish and polish it for publication because it can be such a big formidable task? Let Diane Dewey help you resolve your writing issues. Diane’s manuscript coaching offers help with sticking points like the arc of your story and how to flesh it out, finding the inner story and what you want to say, developing your message revelations that become your reader’s takeaways, helping to rally the motivation to finish your project and what to do next. We can analyze, edit and advise you on publishing. Who are the next collaborators on your writing path? If you seek resolution to these and other questions please contact Diane Dewey author of the award-winning memoir Fixing the Fates. Find her at trunordmedia.com. That’s T-R-U-N-O-R-D.com or on her author’s page dianedewey.com. Diane can also be found through social media. Connect with her through the links on the show page.

Stimulating talk, it gets those synapses in the brains firing really fast all the time. The number one internet talk station where your opinion counts voiceamerica.com

You are listening to Dropping In with Diane Dewey. We’d love to hear from you if you have a question or comment about the show. Send us an email to ddewey@trunordmedia.com. That’s the letter ddewey@trunordmedia.com. Now back to Dropping In.

Diane: And we’re back with Linda A. Curtis, author of the beautiful memoir Shunned: How I Lost My Religion and Found Myself. It’s a story of growing up inside the Jehovah Witnesses faith and then becoming a woman who became curious about life. Welcome to the show Linda. We’re delighted to have you.

Linda: Thanks Diane. Great to be with you.

Diane: I want to start out actually by giving a little primer on the Jehovah Witness belief system because I was fascinated and riveted by your memoir in your story but also largely unaware of I would say the absoluteness. I don’t think anyone would argue with that but also like the actual beliefs. I’m going to ask you to put it in your words for as a kind of a brief intro to Jehovah’s Witness but I noticed several points. One was the certainty of Armageddon, the discouragement of let’s say education in a larger sense in the traditional sense of university, colleges, degrees, kind of transcendent belief over and above the laws of the land about marriage and divorce and a kind of a discouragement of ambition.

I guess we all know the proselytizing. We know the pioneering, the door-to-door because we’ve all had the experience of having our door knocked on. What might a Jehovah’s Witness say and what kinds of things are the critical beliefs that you referred to when you think of that your former religion?

Linda: I think it starts with where you started with the idea and the belief that there is an eminent Armageddon. That drives a lot of the rigidity of the religion and beliefs that I think are really grounded in fear. The overview of the belief is that that Jehovah God and that is viewed to be God’s personal name and how he wishes to be addressed. That Jehovah God is almighty. He’s the creator and he created Adam and Eve. They’re fundamentalists in the way that they actually believe literally things in that area said in the Bible including that you should shun people that leave the religion. We can get to that in a moment.

They believe that almighty God, this Jehovah created the earth and put Adam and Eve on the earth. The original vision was that human beings who were physically perfect and had the capacity to live forever would fill the earth, populate it and the earth would be a beautiful paradise that would be very, very peaceful. That is what God originally intended but of course we know sin was introduced. Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that Satan, the devil is a very real personage. Maybe a spirit but still an actual personage who wants to tempt and avert as many humans as possible away from Jehovah God and towards him. These are things that they get from scripture.

I grew up with in the idea that God is going to actually restore that original vision to the earth, that he’s going to bring back paradisiac conditions after this Armageddon that’s been promised and mentioned in the Bible. God will destroy all of the wicked people that he finds on the earth at the time this Armageddon. He’ll save all of the people that worship him and he’ll destroy those that do not and he’ll destroy all the systems and things that humans have put in place that have failed to bring peace.

In my growing up I saw that I’m supposed to knock on doors and preach and tell people about this impending Armageddon. Basically they could get on the right team. They could get on the team I was on, Jehovah’s team. Preaching and knocking on doors is considered an act of care and love for our neighbors. Of course as a pleaser and you referenced that at the top of the show wanting to do good and getting pat’s on the head. I started knocking on doors when I was a young girl and I did that every month through my entire life until I was 30 and I left of religion. It’s an integral part of the faith that we preach and proselytize because this Armageddon is really coming anytime.

I talk about this in my memoir. I only live with this idea as a little girl and then as a teenager and then as a young woman that literally Armageddon is coming any minute and to quote scripture we must be ready for it. It will not be late. Late in terms of God’s timing. If it’s not here yet you’ve got to trust it’s got to come. You just keep your head down and stay uninvolved with worldly things. Don’t go to university because you don’t want to get distracted because Armageddon’s coming. Don’t get too big of a job that will take too much of your time and draw you away from spiritual activities like going to the Kingdom Hall and knocking on doors. If you just take those two beliefs that actually drives a lot of what goes on beyond that.

Diane: It would because and now it makes perfect logic what you’re saying because I mean Armageddon and I’m really very much adamant that we’re being non-judgmental here but I mean Armageddon as a pretext is certainly you would wonder why there would be such a following because it’s a little gloomy if all were to do is preparing for the end. That’s not the first belief system that’s been based on negativity. It just it just is an extreme form but I mean I loved the pivotal moment when you were as you were just describing your progression to in proselytizing and knocking on doors that you knocked on the door of a co-worker, a man that you truly admired and respected and really deeply felt was a very good human being in your interactions with him. You had to look him in the eye and tell him that yes, he was going to die. That was riveting for you and that sort of set in motion the kind of…

Linda: It was. Just to clarify what you’re really conveying in that moment that you described was not the words you’re going to die didn’t really come out of my mouth but there was the implication that sharing with him God’s going to destroy the wicked and this is what’s going to happen. By virtue of what I was saying I heard oh my God I’ve basically told this man he’s going to be destroyed. Do I really believe that a loving God would do that to somebody like this? He’s really I know to be a very, very fine person high integrity human being and that’s when I kind of got rattled out of my reverie. It was happening when I was in my late 20s. Just the normal course of a Saturday knocking on doors and sometimes when we get hit over the head just going through our normal life and something happens that wakes us up into something new. That was how it worked for me.

Diane: I loved that you became kind of mindful at that point. You started an internal dialogue about well, wait a minute what am I saying. Like you started a talk between your inner and outer selves. I would imagine that that is pretty discouraged as well in the sense of challenging but then that obviously is the way forward in terms of growing. I wondered if you would the arc of the book from that point you sort of spiral out and become more and more self-aware. I wonder if you would just talk about what personality traits you thought you had? Was it intuition? I mean not just traits but forces that were at work. I mean there was a kind of a mindfulness. You were trying to be honest with yourself. Was it intuition that was guiding you? What was guiding you through the process of I mean ultimately starting all of this? What do you think was happening really?

Linda: What a great question. I think and I know that I’m one of tens of thousands of people that have left my religion or my former religion because people leave that religion according to pew research my religion, former religion has the lowest retention rate of any religion in the US. One in four people that are raised in the religion will leave it. I know that I’m in good company here but what I will say it takes for me and I know for others is courage like it’s because you’ve come from something strict that if you leave you will be shunned. You know that because you’ve watched other people leave and be shunned and like really shunned like completely cast out, cut off. You do not hear from people. That’s one of the worst things like I consider that a form of emotional terrorism. It is very torturous.

For me, you’re sitting there and you’re thinking I don’t believe this anymore. For me it started with I just want to take a break from going to the Kingdom Hall and all of this and sort of sort out what do I believe. I was very jarred. These things I’ve been believing my whole life I’m questioning. It’s very uncomfortable. I just wanted to hit the pause button and kind of be on my own for a while. I did do that and then it turned into actually leaving the religion about a year later but to your question it takes courage. You’re sitting there looking at I’m going to get cut off for my family. I was close to my family and it’s a loving family. I knew that some of my best friends, people that had been in my wedding and I’d been in their wedding they would cut me off and they did so courage is the first thing.

I feel like we all have this inner drive, inner essence of who we are. You mentioned the word intuition. That’s definitely part of it where there was just something inside of me that I could not ignore that said go this way. Go this way. Yes, it’s going to be painful. Yes, it’s going to be painful but you can do it and I’d get scared. Well, how is this going to work out? I have moments of doubt like what if they are right and Armageddon’s coming then I’m out and I could be destroyed. I hadn’t yet completely abandoned that belief so I’d go back to it every once a month again. Maybe that is true after all.

There’s a period when you leave in the early parts of leaving the religion where the part of me, the intuition, the voice, that internal voice that came up was just fortunately strong enough and loud enough. I had the wisdom or the good sense if you will to listen to that voice and allow it to be a bigger voice than the fear.

Diane: Which was enormous and did take great courage. I recall our talk with Andrei Dubus III who mentioned intuition. The Greek for intuition is protection. The word means protection. You’re getting a protection from intuition. You instinctively allowed yourself to trust it which was an incredible thing because you had a sense of belonging. I think it’s important for everyone to know that you did have this loving family. They come across in the book as being kind of warm and lots of fun in certain ways and people that you would want to be with. It’s not as though you had a miserable childhood. You had a wonderful kind of warm, embracing childhood and in fact it seemed as though when you hit that pause button what you were really looking for was space and freedom.

It kept reminding me of the dichotomy of freedom and belonging, the need to belong versus the need for freedom, to explore, to find, to as you say inner essence that’s pulling you forward. I think facing abandonment for all of that not everyone could do that. I think your book then becomes a wayfinder, a signal for people who are attempting to do something that will displease people around them. What a huge contribution that is. I just congratulate you. I congratulate you for it.

I also want to say so you went then I’m going to just sort of skip a few points but you found yourself in Chicago. You found yourself in the corporate world and in the beginning it was a struggle as it would be in a new place, a new environment, a new job but you had the chops. You became a banker. You became accomplished and I think this was probably very threatening also. It was the worldly sinful place that you were in that you were championing it but before it came together and crystallized you were having your own doubts. You were wondering whether you were being punished. I wonder if any of those nagging doubts ever return just subconsciously to haunt you even in moments of trials and tribulations and even now? Where does that go?

Linda: That’s a belief. It’s a construct that we will be punished that I’ve let go of. In my own development as a human being and my own thought process I have been out of that religion since 1995. I was shunned starting in 1996. You and I are having this conversation in 2020. Years go by and as they do we continue to develop, we continue to grow. You mentioned freedom and you mentioned belonging and just allowing myself to be open to consider different ideas. I still feel like I’m that way. I haven’t ascribed to one individual religion or joined another organized religion though I consider myself very egalitarian and esoteric in my beliefs. I love hearing about different religions and so forth.

In Chicago yes, in the early days when of what I would call recovering from my religion, recovering how to think, recovering just from being shunned and having to rebuild. It’s a lot to handle and you’re processing a lot. In that time I still had connections to old ways of thinking and believing which was if something goes wrong oh maybe God’s punishing you. Maybe that is a sign that you should go back. That was an old way of thinking but now I really understand in another way. There’s useful guilt which is about being punished and then there’s another way which is just a signal that oh, I’m a little out of alignment with my own values and what I know is the right way to be and then course correct so that can be addressed but I no longer feel like I’m being watched by some higher being that’s going to punish me if I don’t do what that entity wants.

Diane: Another triumph but I mean one that is also a natural offshoot of creating self-awareness and developing a vision for yourself and your life from your mind actually. I mean you were a seeker. You were a person who is still seeking. I think that idea of the truth being a very elusive thing and whether or not we even have it as a whole remaining issue and whether it’s even ours to “have”, whether we are united as human beings because we really don’t have the truth and that what we need to do is be compassionate towards ourselves and one another because of it and because we’re doing the best we can.

I enjoy this book about stripping away and coming into your own. Also what you just mentioned was very key for me realigning yourself and listening to your own values. I want to talk about the notion. We’re going to take a short break here but when we come back I’d like to talk about the notion of your life coalescing, coming together and really bearing fruit once you started aligning with yourself. Don’t go away folks. We’re going to be continuing our conversation with Linda A. Curtis, author of Shunned. Be right back.

Voice America is on your favorite smart speaker. If you have Alexa or Google Home go ahead and give us a try. Hey Alexa, play Finding Your Frequency Podcast on TuneIn.

Has your manuscript languished because you can’t find the direction it wants to take or have you lost the motivation to finish and polish it for publication because it can be such a big formidable task? Let Diane Dewey help you resolve your writing issues. Diane’s manuscript coaching offers help with sticking points like the arc of your story and how to flesh it out, finding the inner story and what you want to say, developing your message revelations that become your reader’s takeaways, helping to rally the motivation to finish your project and what to do next. We can analyze, edit and advise you on publishing. Who are the next collaborators on your writing path? If you seek resolution to these and other questions please contact Diane Dewey author of the award-winning memoir Fixing the Fates. Find her at trunordmedia.com. That’s T-R-U-N-O-R-D.com or on her author’s page dianedewey.com. Diane can also be found through social media. Connect with her through the links on the show page.

Streaming live the leader in internet talk radio voiceamerica.com.

You are listening to Dropping In with Diane Dewey. We’d love to hear from you if you have a question or comment about the show. Send us an email to ddewey@trunordmedia.com. That’s the letter ddewey@trunordmedia.com. Now back to Dropping In.

Diane: And we’re back. We’re here with Linda A. Curtis, author of the memoir Shunned: How I Lost My Religion and Found Myself. What a fascinating, expansive, generous memoir this is. I urge you to have a look if you’re seeking or deciding or finding yourself and that includes everyone and who isn’t? I think that we were just before the break we were alluding to a way in which you Linda because you started aligning yourself with your inner values and getting in touch with your own inner guidance. Your life and your potential started really manifesting. You became extremely accomplished in your career, corporate life. Also I think found what I would call a flow. You developed interests and altruistic interests and charitable interests and biking interests and things that really went beyond any of the limitations that you had grown up with in the sense of we need to hunker down and prepare for the Armageddon.

Your life became a kind of a counterbalance to that. I just wonder like is that a kind of a mantra then that you inherently adapted that if we do align ourselves inwardly with our values that that is something that a flow will find a way into our lives as well? Is that something or how do you read that for yourself?

Linda: Let’s see. That’s so interesting. I think a happy life, a life as you describe that is in flow is a result of good choices. You just have one choice point after another after another. That choice leads to another. I had a disturbing encounter with a co-worker years ago and made a choice that I would stop and question a religion. Then I made another choice and so on.

I think it’s good for all of us to learn. You mentioned giving yourself permission at the top of the show in your own story. One of your authors, I’m sorry someone who wrote in that said they gave themselves permission to take that seven week or trip to do the Camino. That’s what we need to do. I mean nobody else is going to give us permission to be ourselves. It’s really up to us. It’s up to us to save our lives. That’s not our partner’s responsibility that. Whatever it is that’s going on we have the right to be happy and the responsibility I think to act on what will make us happy. That requires just choosing and choosing to listen to our intuition, choosing to follow that even when it’s hard.

I think always there are going to be losses as we grow and develop where in my case it was a very extreme losses of being shunned. I still as I grow and develop friendships will come and go for my life based on my interests or how things are going or you make a choice to go in another direction and it doesn’t please somebody else. It’s not my job to make other people happy. That’s one of the big learnings I took away.

That doesn’t mean we have to be harsh or unkind with important people in our lives but it just means that as Mary Oliver said what are you going to do with this one precious life. In that way I just feel like that’s what I keep doing and it’s working out really well. That doesn’t mean that since I’ve left my religion I don’t have challenges, that I don’t suffer from the vagaries of life and existential questions. That’s all still there but I feel like I’m living my life not somebody else’s life.

Diane: That’s empowering. That’s very empowering. I do think though one thing that I also think is very cool. If we look at the kind of positive value of your upbringing you were very hard working. You were very disciplined from an early age because there’s so many requirements in this faith that in the Jehovah’s Witness program if you will. You had a structure and a dedication that while we’re busy looking at the abstracts here of choice and flow. I also think that in ingrained in all of this is this commitment that you had and your knowledge that you had to work really, really hard.

I think you applied that you got yourself educated. You got yourself trained. When the opportunity came to broaden or deepen your skills or go to a new city and be in Houston and develop new banking, you did it. There’s a certain sense of fearlessness that once you got started this thing kind of just built on itself, this momentum, like a runaway freight train it was something very inspirational. I’m sure people tell you that all the time from reading this gorgeous book. Do you think that, we were talking about guilt and money? Let’s say acquisition of means and wealth to be able to carry on in the world. It’s something that women often get kind of, the guilt trips about or in certain generations of us that were built, brought up with the idea of being non-materialistic. I think you kind of faced all of that down too. How was that for you to do?

Linda: I think it’s an ongoing process but it starts I think with gratitude. You were mentioning honorable closure and how do we have honorable closure from one phase to another or one job or one relationship. An honorable means that we complete that experience so that we can then take the best from the experience and the learnings and then move forward into the future and not be encumbered by unfinished business.

For me, you mentioned the hard work and all of that. I feel I’ve had closure with my family, with my religion and I think I like your take on being non-judgmental. I certainly don’t have judgments against people that are currently Jehovah’s Witnesses. I think it’s a valid spiritual path for many people and it enriches their lives and helps them feel connected and belonging.

I am against their belief of shunning. I think that’s wrong and I don’t believe the way they believe but when I look back on my religion and my upbringing I can be very grateful for the skills that I got from that from how I was raised. You mentioned working hard. There’s a way you look back and you go wow, here’s all the great things that I took away from that.

Also you mentioned money. Money was, I had a family that had certain ideas. We were certainly middle class and my parents were very hard-working and I’m sure there were times when it was very paycheck to paycheck. Not always but I think I could feel that when it was like that. Getting out of my family structure and into the world that just showed up as another thing to question. It just showed up as another belief to examine. I’ve over the years continue to examine my beliefs about what’s enough, what am I worth, what do I deserve. That’s an ongoing process but I am completely open to the idea of making a good income. I have ideas about that. It’s like this or something more but in service to a happy life. Also using money in service to creating and a world that I want to live in. Once you have money to share or donate it becomes a nice way of thinking well you know what matters to me.

That’s an extension of no longer believing in Armageddon because Armageddon is God’s going to take care of all of the problems. Social justice, don’t worry about. Armageddon’s going to come and that problem is going to go away. Environmental issues don’t worry about it. Armageddon’s coming. God’s got that taken care of. You just preach, knock on doors and survive. That whole construct. Now, I think oh nobody’s coming to save me. Nobody’s coming to save the planet. It’s up to us to do that. What are the people, organizations, associations that are doing good work and then sharing my money with them if I have extra. Just like looking at that is another way that I get to belong in this world that I get to invest in myself and I get to invest in people and causes with my resources whether that’s my time, my attention or my money. That’s how it’s worked for me is it’s all it’s all been part of the construct that’s needed to be chipped away of beliefs.

Diane: I like how it all it all became up for grabs and all became eligible for questioning. You’ve given in other words another voice to yourself through money because charity and charitable giving is a way of expressing our beliefs and supporting and giving power to causes. We talked last week about how charity is the new children for those of us that don’t have biological children. I think it’s a beautiful expression, a beautiful way to share and communicate.

I think also that your book is so timely in the sense that here’s the arc of baby boomers for example who are looking at end of life scenarios and increasingly finding that my friends are getting sick and even for those that are telescoping way back to millennials it’s really important I think to have responsibility for ourselves and to have responsibility for walking through the process of ending our life with grace. You talk about this as your book closes as well. Couldn’t be more relevant and timely for this generation who doesn’t want to exit without dignity and grace. Could you close us? We’re just about out of time but can you close this with just a little your vision now because you’re helping people with this.

Linda: I do work with people that are in transitions or something’s ended and I created a four-step process for closure. I do one-on-one work and then also a team. I love it but in a nutshell you’re talking about the big endings, the end of our life. We want to end our lives in that way then we have to live our lives that way. The work that I do helps people skill up in the area of endings, exits and goodbyes. Something that’s very uncomfortable for most of us but if we can be good and skillful and graceful with ending deaths and some goodbyes that involve leaving a religion, leaving a marriage, leaving a job, etc. then we’re going to have that skill set as we advance towards the big ending that we all face.

Diane: Excellent. I’m just going to close with a big note of gratitude to you for helping us face what’s important to face and for giving us your grace and insight on endings and closure. That’s it for this week on Dropping In. Thank you so much Linda A. Curtis for opening our eyes on your personal journey.

Linda: My pleasure. Thank you Diane.

Diane: The book is Shunned: How I Lost My Religion and Found Myself. We’ll see you next week and on that note we’ll close our show and give you best wishes for your search, your journey, your path.

Thank you so much for dropping in. Please join Diane Dewey again next Friday at 8 AM Pacific Time and 11 AM Eastern Time on the Voice America Variety Channel. We’ll see you then.