Ms Elyse Deal

Healing Through Irreverence and Wit Ms Elyse Deal

Publisher Marketing: The title of my memoirs is Healing Through Irreverence and Wit. It is a southern woman's perspective of life and actual events experienced while growing up in the cult of home-grown religion. It is also a story about how love can heal the deepest of family wounds. My narrative tells of families seduced by one man's alleged experience and how it unraveled family loyalties. My personal story started slowly but gained significant speed. It is a sometimes humorous but therapeutic romp through a shared hell. The right to one's own voice is basic. No one has the right to stifle it. My story is about the struggle of trying to "be in the right spirit" in order to avoid punishment. It is about home-grown religion that destroys the fabric of individuals as they transcend childhood, teenage years, parenthood and beyond. Those who inflicted misery and control are the main players. Sarcasm and humor are used to buffer the wounds of experience in those who yielded their spirits to the psychoses of the leaders whose recreation was the fine art of humiliation and belittling. As one who lived through the escalation of the cult's control and dysfunction, I am able to give readers a first hand account of the truth in brainwashing. This is my first writing journey. I have written it with passion and from deep within my soul. While reading Healing Through Irreverence and Wit, one quickly develops a keen sense of relating to a woman's plight while dealing with Southern life in the sixties. Enduring a cult creates the momentum. My family strictly forbade the writing of this book. I have evolved!