Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology (25 page)

R
IGHT AFTER
I
LEFT THE
church, my first thought was:
Bad things are going to happen to me
. Even though bad things had been happening to me
in
the church—and for a long time—I still couldn’t shake a thought process of personal cause and effect that had been hammered into me ever since my mother sat Nicole and me down at our kitchen table in Bensonhurst as kids and talked to us about the precepts from her communication course.

As an antidote to my ruminating, I actively filled my head with a different kind of idea. I looked at everything I used, from Post-its to shampoo, and reasoned that somehow these companies have found a way to be successful
without
Scientology. People—happy, well-off, fulfilled people—walked by me every day who didn’t use LRH technology.

After thinking a certain way, and being told what to think based on strict policy for more than thirty years, learning to think for myself and make my own choices did not come easily, nor did it happen overnight. Now, more than two years after cutting ties with the church, I’m still trying to figure things out. This mindset, which had been drilled into me for decades, is not an easy thing to “unlearn.” With practically every decision I made when I first left (and still even
now), I had to ask myself
Is that what
you
really think, or what a Scientologist would think?

During this confusing early period, I sometimes felt adrift, but I had one figure I kept front and center in my mind to keep from going crazy: Nicole Kidman.

That’s right, Tom Cruise’s ex was my guardian angel. Although I never met her or attempted to meet her, I thought about her a lot. While I stared at the dark ceiling at night, unable to sleep, I would say to myself, “Remember Nicole Kidman. She was declared an SP and left the church, and she’s doing okay. Her career is still going, and she has a husband and family…Just remember Nicole Kidman. She left and she’s okay…”

And while the many friends I had in the church turned their backs on me, a number of those who had already left offered me comfort and solace.

My friend Paul Haggis, the movie director and former longtime Scientologist, sent me a note, part of which read:

But here is what I want you to know; I will do anything for you—anything you need. Privately or very publicly. Decide what that is, what you need of me, and ask and I will just say yes.

The fact that you refused to disconnect [from me] truly touched me. You were the only one. Which says a lot about you and even more about the good people who used to be our mutual friends. You are a better example of a scientologist than they ever were, because you truly applied your code of honor, and the danger formula, both of which they are afraid to do honestly.

Over the past few years I’ve read this letter hundreds of times to remind myself that I could just possibly be a good person at times. When Paul left the church and became the subject of a
New Yorker
magazine article and Lawrence Wright’s book
Going Clear,
he took and continues to take a lot of heat from the church and its members. It was very public. One of the reasons Paul left the church was
because of the offensive manner in which they view homosexuality. Two of Paul’s daughters are gay, and he knew that he could no longer participate in a religion that discounted his own children. I, like him, was disgusted by the church’s position and as a result I refused to disconnect from him despite the fact that I had been told to do so. Paul was and remains a friend.

“I’m so happy for you. You’re about to experience life for the first time,” Jason Beghe said to me a few weeks after I had left. “It’s like Christmas when you’re a kid, magical and amazing.”

The last time I saw Jason was at CC. I said, “Hi, baby, whatcha doin’?” Naturally, I meant course-wise or auditing-wise, but he answered: “Leaving.” I was confused, so I asked him what he meant.

“Leaving the church,” he said.

I still didn’t get it.

“CC?”

“No, the whole thing, Kitten.”

The news came as a complete shock. Jason was so dedicated.

“What happened? What can I do to help?” I said. He just smiled his movie star smile and said, “No, baby doll, it’s done, but I love you.”

Now that I had left the church, Jason was trying to show me what he had already experienced. His comment about it being like Christmas reminded me of the movie
The Nightmare Before Christmas
, where everyone lives in Halloween Town, and all they know from is a world related to Halloween. One day the main character Jack Skellington wanders into the forest and finds seven holiday doors and opens a portal to Christmas Town. Here, for the first time, he finds that there is a world outside of Halloween. He begins to question all he sees when he continually asks “What’s this?” It was the same thing for me and I imagine for anyone else who has left a cult-like community. Worlds open up to you that you were previously cut off from. I now realize that there are plenty of people in the universe doing good things. Not just Scientologists, as I was falsely led to believe.

M
OST
S
CIENTOLOGISTS
WILL NEVER MEET
Tom Cruise or David Miscavige. They will never experience seeing behind the curtain like I and a handful of others have. And that is why most of my friends found what I went through unbelievable.

On the other side of things, sitting down and talking to my non-Scientology friends for the first time about the “double life” I had been leading and unburdening myself to them with the truth was scary but ultimately cathartic.

I was nervous to tell Jennifer that not only had I left the church but her father, David Lopez, a longtime Scientologist, might have pressure put on him to disconnect from his daughter or to have Jennifer disconnect from me.

I called her and told her I needed to come over and talk to her. Her first response was “Is everyone okay?”

“Yes, it’s about the church.”

I drove to her house, going over in my mind if it would be the last time I would see or talk to her, if our friendship would be over. Much like it had been with my friends in the church who had chosen to disconnect from me.

Upon my arrival at Jennifer’s, she was waiting for me with my favorite coffee.

I started with “So the church has this policy…” And I explained disconnection to her. “If you stay friends with me, your dad will have to choose between you and the church and in more cases than not, people choose the church. So I am telling you that I understand your choice to disconnect from me.”

Jennifer is a family girl, 100 percent. And although we are close, I assumed she would unequivocally choose her family, which I respected and was totally prepared for. Although I would have to mourn the loss of yet another friendship, I wouldn’t want her to make any other decision. As I sat there with my head down and tears welling in my eyes, she said, “That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard.”

“I know, Jen, but it’s the policy of the church.”

She rolled her eyes and said, “That’s my dad, he would never. And you are my friend. I don’t want to ever talk about this bullshit again.” And with that she offered me a chocolate chip cookie.

As the press rolled out the news in subsequent weeks, Jen often reminded me not to get caught up in the game of it, but to remember that good things happened to me while I was in the church and to take what positive experiences I had and move on with love from there. To find my peace with it, not to hate them.

I am grateful to have Jennifer in my life. And while she may be known as J-Lo to most, at the same time she is a person who continues to improve who she is as a mother, a daughter, a sister, a woman. Once people reach a certain level in this business, they stop trying. And my friend hasn’t. And for that, I admire her and am most impressed.

Jen is open to different paths, which is one of the many things I love about her. She doesn’t judge and is truly about self-love. She introduced me to therapy and she helped me to open up my mind to the idea that “there is more than one way.” For the last thirty-plus years, I was taught that there
is
only one way and that way is Scientology.

So while it’s been a little more than two years now since I left the organization, for the first time it’s like I’m living a real and authentic life—everything from sitting and enjoying a glass of wine with non-Scientologist girlfriends without secretly judging them as they speak about their lives and thinking Scientology could help them with that, to worrying that I am wasting my time finding enjoyment in my child or family when I should be on course or in session instead. I put so much time, energy, and resources into the church that it left little room for anything else.

In an attempt to further explore the world outside Scientology, I have been learning, or at least trying to learn, how to deal with my emotions in therapy (any form of psychoanalysis or therapy is completely frowned upon by the church).

My therapist has opened my eyes to so much information and knowledge that has helped me understand myself and other people.
We also worked on trying to alleviate the massive guilt I felt not only for abandoning a church that I was part of for my whole life but also for leading my whole family out of it as well. I was responsible for the fact that my mother, stepfather, sister, and brother-in-law lost their entire social network. My brother-in-law also lost his dad, his sisters, and his nephew. The damaging domino effect started with me. It has occurred to me more than I like to admit that maybe I was a Suppressive Person, who did the wrong thing.

“Did you ever think that maybe you’ve saved their lives?” my therapist once asked. “You all learned what you learned from Scientology. Now you’re out, and your new job could be something else because you went through it.”

Instead of bashing Scientology, she asked me what worked about it. Her point was that in life there are “knowledges.” You can take a little bit from this and a little bit from that. Use what works for you and leave the rest.

“Leah, it doesn’t need to be all right or all wrong. Take what worked. Don’t try to throw away everything from Scientology.”

But that was the policy of the church. You were either all in or all out. It is an extremist religion. There is no middle ground. And there within its structure lies the danger.

It was as if she were giving me permission to find resolution in my past. With that I felt such relief. Once I started to encounter testimonies of abuse at the hands of the church, I also started to doubt all of the technology and practices that I had learned and applied over the decades as well. Today, I’m able to ascertain which concepts and precepts were helpful to me and am able to still apply them. And I am now comfortable with the idea that even if I could find things the church offered me that feel “right,” that didn’t mean my leaving it was wrong. And although I thought the problem with the church was David Miscavige and Tom Cruise, now I realize that if both of them left the church tomorrow I wouldn’t necessarily feel differently about Scientology. To me, it’s a structural flaw of the faith that its adherents are forbidden from challenging the leader (and its
policies) at all costs. And right behind the current leader is another of the same kind.

P
EOPLE ARE SURPRISED WHEN THEY
hear that I don’t feel any anger toward my mother for getting us into Scientology in the first place. She stood by me when it mattered the most, after I left the church, and I know she always had my best interests at heart. She didn’t want her daughters growing up in a bad environment; she wanted more for us, and yet she didn’t have any other options for getting us out of Brooklyn. My mom—aspiring, hardworking, but without resources or a safety net—was the perfect candidate for Scientology. So she took us to Florida on a leap of faith, believing in what she was doing, just as I believe in what I’m doing now.

And just as my mother fought for Nicole and me to have a better life, now I am looking out for my own daughter, and I’m very grateful that I never indoctrinated her in any way before I left the church. As long as I was a Scientologist, the church told me what to do and what not to do in almost every aspect of my life. If I had any doubts about leaving my faith, they vanished when I thought of Sofia growing up with that same kind of dependency. I didn’t want her to grow up thinking her connection to the church was the measure of her success in life. I wanted her to be an individual. Belief and faith are great, but very few people have been led astray by thinking for themselves.