****

Today’s post is inspired by the movie Lemonade. The movie’s tag line is, “It’s not a pink slip. It’s a blank page.”

The movie has nothing to do with cults. It has to do with ad industry employees who were laid off recently and who have realized that what may have seemed like misfortune on the day they received their lay-off notice has actually turned into one of the greatest opportunities in their lives.

The stories told in the movie are inspiring and moving. People starting new businesses – everything from coffee roasting and selling to being a yoga teacher. People who have just recently survived cancer, being faced with being laid off and discovering that this was the best thing that ever happened to them. Fantastic, hopeful, heart-lifting stories, all.

The one story that brought tears to my eyes was that of David Cohen who says, “I got laid off and I changed my gender.”

Unless you’ve seen the movie, I’ll have to explain.

Somewhere in the process of being laid off from his advertising job, David realized that he was a woman living in a man’s body. He left his wife, his father died, and he lost his job. All this sounds like tragedy and trauma and crisis but really it was an opening.

Imagine changing your gender. Imagine asking everyone you’ve ever known to now refer to you as the opposite sex. Imagine the loss of identity and the grief that would cause. To paraphrase Cameron Crowe, it would be a pride swallowing siege, every day, day after day, for years.

In a way, that’s what leaving a cult is like. It requires that we rearrange every piece, every part of who we think we are. It requires that we question everything we believe to be true about ourselves, our lives, our spirituality. It is painful and heartbreaking and dirty, ugly work.

But it is so totally worth it because all that challenging, painful work brings us freedom. From the first day that we leave the cult we get to live our own lives, not the life the cult leader has been controlling for us.

If there is one message I want readers to get from reading Cult, A Love Story it is this. What can seem like a disaster is actually an opportunity. Turn your lemons into lemonade.

Every second of life matters. Every moment of the rest of your life matters, no matter how long you’ve been imprisoned.

You DO have the courage to make that choice and choose freedom. David Cohen changed his gender. You have the courage to change your mind.

I promise.