Do you feel guilty? Have you forgiven yourself?

I've been thinking about some of the exchanges on this board yesterday and I think I might know what some of the underlying issues really are. Often we react because of things that have built up over incidents and traumas from our past. I know that for me, for a long, long, time, I felt guilty. I felt guilty for many reasons. First I felt guilty that I had failed God because I left the group I thought was where God wanted me to be. Even though I knew that was not true, the guilt that Berg had imprisoned me with was a long time in leaving me. After I wrestled with that and finally got out from underneath that, and largely from reading such writings like Ribbi Kushner's "When Bad Things Happen to Good People" - I then went into a deep depression because I felt guilty for "joining" a cult and putting my children through something they should not have had to deal with. That guilt went on for many years. I would apologize to my children over and over, say how I had been a bad mother to them, and on and on. I battled with depression and had a hard time to free myself from it. Finally, one day my older daughter and I were on a little walk and I said it again. She looked at me and said, "Mom, you were just doing what you thought was good - you wanted to do something good." You know, she's right. I didn't go into it with a bad heart and evil intentions. I was caught up in something that was beyond me and I became helpless in getting out. I will no longer be under that guilt and that fear, I have had to learn how to forgive myself and realize that I have value in spite of my many mistakes. Gosh, people make horrendous mistakes all the time, go to jail, do all kinds of things and then turn their lives around and live normal, productive lives. We're not the only ones. I've seen kids have to visit their parents in jail - how is that? THat has to be bad. I just firmly believe we're all in this together and the lines are not drawn that clearly.

For the poster below to tell someone they sound like the women leader bitches is really uncalled for and should not be allowed on this board. I know our emotions run high in this format and from our pasts, but that is counter productive. I made that mistake once and told a poster that and I feel bad about it now. It's easy to do, but it's not going to help and it's certainly not true.

With all that said, I just want everyone to know, we're all in this together and we all need to support each other, old and young alike and I know it happens. This site was started with that in mind and nothing has changed.