Thu Mar 06, 2008 3:16 pm
Leaving the SO as a family.
Many people on here will know the story I wrote on ESMB but there are some parts of it, especially from 1989 onward that probably fit much better on here.
Some background - my wife's name is Nancy, she is from the US and we met in FOLO EU when I went there on garrison mission in 1978 from Flag. She was AG FOLO, I was A/CS6 EU. Over a couple of months we sort of got to know each and in November 78 we went for a walk on a wednesday night - our first "date" - I proposed, she accepted and we were married 8 days later.
Nancy had a son from her previous marriage - Chris, my stepson, he was three when we got married. A year after we were married Sean was born - he had contracted rubella (German measles) during the pregnancy and was born with severe disabilities.
Chris, of course, probably went through the same things that all the other XSO kids talk about - I do not know if thats the case because Chris is still "in" and is disconnected from us. More on that a bit later.
I am bypassing a whole bunch of stuff - moving directly from 1978 to 1989.
In 1989 Nancy and I and the boys were back in Copenhagen Nancy and I were the Scandinavian Tour for IAS, a job I positively hated and had no talent for. I was also heart broken at what had happened to the Scandinavian Orgs since 1982 - they had been totally crushed.
Anyway - I get comm eved after sending a whole report to DM about the state of the Scandinavian field and telling him that I had falsified the income regged for the IAS because I could not possibly justify regging people who had already been hosed.
During the comm ev I realized that it was a foregone conclusion - I was going to get declared, again.
So one evening - around 8 pm the two missionaires that were there came to tell me the good ews and read the F&Rs to me. I went to talk to Nancy about it - the last time I had been declared, back in 82, she had stayed, hoping I would get things sorted out. this time I was not going to be sorting things out, I wanted out and I was not ever going back.
Nancy said that there was no doubt, we were leaving together. You have just got to admire the living bejesus out of this woman because being married to me had certainly been an "adventure" throughout our whole time together and now she was ready to walk out of the door of something she had known for almost the entirety of her adult life (she joined the SO when she was 17) and make the big leap into something she knew almost nothing about.
It was not easy - as I wrote on ESMB - we were out on the streets of Copenhagen, neither of us spoke Danish very well, we had no friends or family in Copenhagen who were not Scientologists and we were broke. Fortunately Sean was safely at the boarding school in Aalborg and we persuaded Chris to stay in the SO with friends (well ex-friends I guess). Chris biological father, Neil Lumsden, was still in the SO at NEP so we figured that's where he would be safest. To be frank if he had come with us I don't know what it would have been like.
After a few weeks of scraping help from various areas (Sean's school being the main one) and finally getting jobs at the SAS Scandinavia Hotel - thanks to Nancy's talking abilities. We managed to get a small apartment to live in - I mean it was smalllllll. It seemed huge to us. Chris came to visit on Saturday and told us he wanted to be with us and not in the SO so we got his stuff from the Nordland and he moved into this place with us. It was not easy but somehow it seemed easier than being in the SO..
We moved to a bigger apartment after a few months, always short term rentals because we could not buy a place or put together the deposit for a long term rental. And we continued working for SAS. Finally we decided to move back to the States. great move on our part.
After being in the states for 6 years or so Chris decided to go back to Copenhagen, once there he met up with his old friends (who are all ESK's of course) and went back in and joined staff at Copenhagen Org - where he still is.
I have always been besotted with Nancy since the first walk. Still am.
Some background - my wife's name is Nancy, she is from the US and we met in FOLO EU when I went there on garrison mission in 1978 from Flag. She was AG FOLO, I was A/CS6 EU. Over a couple of months we sort of got to know each and in November 78 we went for a walk on a wednesday night - our first "date" - I proposed, she accepted and we were married 8 days later.
Nancy had a son from her previous marriage - Chris, my stepson, he was three when we got married. A year after we were married Sean was born - he had contracted rubella (German measles) during the pregnancy and was born with severe disabilities.
Chris, of course, probably went through the same things that all the other XSO kids talk about - I do not know if thats the case because Chris is still "in" and is disconnected from us. More on that a bit later.
I am bypassing a whole bunch of stuff - moving directly from 1978 to 1989.
In 1989 Nancy and I and the boys were back in Copenhagen Nancy and I were the Scandinavian Tour for IAS, a job I positively hated and had no talent for. I was also heart broken at what had happened to the Scandinavian Orgs since 1982 - they had been totally crushed.
Anyway - I get comm eved after sending a whole report to DM about the state of the Scandinavian field and telling him that I had falsified the income regged for the IAS because I could not possibly justify regging people who had already been hosed.
During the comm ev I realized that it was a foregone conclusion - I was going to get declared, again.
So one evening - around 8 pm the two missionaires that were there came to tell me the good ews and read the F&Rs to me. I went to talk to Nancy about it - the last time I had been declared, back in 82, she had stayed, hoping I would get things sorted out. this time I was not going to be sorting things out, I wanted out and I was not ever going back.
Nancy said that there was no doubt, we were leaving together. You have just got to admire the living bejesus out of this woman because being married to me had certainly been an "adventure" throughout our whole time together and now she was ready to walk out of the door of something she had known for almost the entirety of her adult life (she joined the SO when she was 17) and make the big leap into something she knew almost nothing about.
It was not easy - as I wrote on ESMB - we were out on the streets of Copenhagen, neither of us spoke Danish very well, we had no friends or family in Copenhagen who were not Scientologists and we were broke. Fortunately Sean was safely at the boarding school in Aalborg and we persuaded Chris to stay in the SO with friends (well ex-friends I guess). Chris biological father, Neil Lumsden, was still in the SO at NEP so we figured that's where he would be safest. To be frank if he had come with us I don't know what it would have been like.
After a few weeks of scraping help from various areas (Sean's school being the main one) and finally getting jobs at the SAS Scandinavia Hotel - thanks to Nancy's talking abilities. We managed to get a small apartment to live in - I mean it was smalllllll. It seemed huge to us. Chris came to visit on Saturday and told us he wanted to be with us and not in the SO so we got his stuff from the Nordland and he moved into this place with us. It was not easy but somehow it seemed easier than being in the SO..
We moved to a bigger apartment after a few months, always short term rentals because we could not buy a place or put together the deposit for a long term rental. And we continued working for SAS. Finally we decided to move back to the States. great move on our part.
After being in the states for 6 years or so Chris decided to go back to Copenhagen, once there he met up with his old friends (who are all ESK's of course) and went back in and joined staff at Copenhagen Org - where he still is.
I have always been besotted with Nancy since the first walk. Still am.
If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
