Question and Response

[@mimigrace7591]

Most people like myself enter religious life young- in my case I was 19. Most families are troubles with divorce, lack of true discipleship and in my case severe poverty. You are going to have wounded, immature kids enter at that age. I don’t think one needs to wait until healed- but I do think the novitiate of three years needs to form the person in this healing. In my case the superiors in the novitiate were themselves very broken, controlling, unhealed woman who ruled by abusive mouths- they were cruel and tore down and ridiculed as a way of “humility”. Everyone in the community knew they were horrible and cruel and yet they held that position for 15 years. I grew to see that ALWAYS unhealthy people with anger issues were put in charge - because these people were also people pleasers who gave the major superior no push back- it was all about control. I left- wrecked and penniless at 30. My heart has grown and healed and I’m so glad I cracked up and left. There was very little love among the superiors- there was also a great fear there- like “hide- mommy’s in a bad mood!” Insane. And my community is known all over as one of the “healthy” communities. They tried to keep the sisters as children to keep them submissive. I deeply loved my sisters- but I learned to hide from authority and keep my heart to myself. They were not safe woman.