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About Me — Mary Mahoney
31 Years in the Children of God do not Define Me
I grew up during the turbulent years of the 1960s. With wide-eyed wonder I took in the pervasive drug use among the young, the streets filled with angry protesters chanting against the war in Vietnam, and the first Woodstock music festival, a drug-infused, muddy love-in of thousands of hippies. The words of Timothy Leary became the slogan of that lost generation, “Turn on, tune in, and drop out.”
Onto to this stage stepped a disenchanted pastor that knew an opportunity when he saw one. He offered the youth another way — a “noble, self-sacrificial way” — to make a difference in the world, and the “Jesus Revolution” was born.
Sixteen year old me jumped at the chance to dedicate my life to service to God and others.
So, I joined the Children of God.
As a result, I soon found myself halfway around the world, on an odyssey through dozens of cult locations that swallowed up the next decades of my life.
In 2004, I finally broke free.
As a result of those years of exploitation, abuse, and intellectual deprivation, I developed a deep hunger for knowledge, a keen appreciation of freedom, and an unstoppable desire to study and learn.
