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I downloaded fathermothergod and read the whole thing today. I finished it a couple of hours ago and have been an emotional, blubbering mess since then. I was identifying with so much of what she said and feeling secure in my gut feeling that Christian Science isn’t the Truth.
– Laura
A moving, powerful, and beautifully written work. The author convincingly recreates the bizarre dynamics of a Christian Science household: the jargon with its euphemisms and absolutist declarations of Truth, the denial and suppression of facts and feelings, the secrecy, the mistrust directed toward non-CS family members. When her mother becomes gravely ill, Lucia is frustrated in every attempt she makes to break through the intransigence of CS belief. Tragic and infuriating.
– Bruce
fathermothergod is extremely readable for non-Christian Scientists as well. Three of my friends and my therapist read it at my request, and their sudden understanding and compassion for me has been unexpected and extremely welcome.
– Valerie
This book was the easiest to read and a great primer for the uninitiated. It was so easy and friendly, while describing the horrors we all shared. This book was the easiest to read and a great primer for the uninitiated. It was so easy and friendly, while describing the horrors we all shared. I loved it, but it was tough to take. My own mom used to lie in bed, writhing in pain and screaming out to God on a regular basis. Damn, scratch the surface and you get so many revelations about things you have yet to really deal with.
– Katie J.
I read fathermothergod over the weekend. It was difficult, but gripping. I cried more than once.
– Cara
fathermothergod was the first critical book about Christian Science that I read after leaving the faith. Its pages stirred echoes of my own experience — from her recounting of childhood memories to her experience with her mother’s illness and death. I read it in about two days; I found it hard to put it down.
– Jeremy
This site offers support resources to help individuals negotiate a transition in a manner that best fits their needs and convictions. We do not advocate any one particular path but acknowledge that there are many legitimate pathways that can be personally and spiritually fulfilling.
“Loosh” knocked this one out of the park. I took a day to read it as the story was compellingly familiar. I found reading the Christian Science life of the Ewing family was therapy for me. I see that others have experienced the profound illogicality of this Christian pseudoscience, a miasma of blame, platitudes, lame metaphors and Victorian language. Thank you, Lucia Greenhouse, for your memoir on Christian Science life.
I have this book to my first therapist. She told me “I couldn’t put it down!” She basically inhaled it during her breaks from giving therapy, and also after work, through dinner, and everything.
Later, I loaned it to another kind of therapist. This person asked me, “what parts did you relate to?”
So I went back and re-read it.
I told my first therapist that this second one had said, “what parts do you relate to?”
And my first therapist said, “ALL OF IT!”
Yes – she is absolutely right- – I relate to ALL of it!
I believed in Christian Science until I was an adult and a parent and even a Journal listed practitioner. I believed it with every fiber of my being. So, the author of this book letting go of her belief in it, well, I didn’t specifically relate to that part. But I know Probably all of the people I grew up in Sunday School with, didn’t believe in it. They had all left it by probably college or soon there-after.
This book ALSO shed a whole lot of light for me on what Christian Science nurses actually DO. My dad and bio mom met in Christian Science “nurses'” training. That’s why I was born. Yep.
But this book helped me realize what my parents saw in the facility, and why my dad was so afraid to go in to one as he battled Parkinson’s Disease.
I am so glad Lucia wrote her story. Her mom deserved so much better than what she got.