A Childhood Spent Waiting for the Apocalypse
Michelle Dowd ’90 presents an unexpected coming-of-age story in her acclaimed new memoir Forager: Field Notes for Surviving a Family Cult
By Tom Johnson | Fall 2023 Issue
The opening sentence of a book can be unforgettable. Anyone familiar with Melville’s Moby Dick 著名的开头是“叫我以实玛利”，而雷·布拉德伯里是这样开头的 Fahrenheit 451 with a simple confession: “It was a pleasure to burn.”
The same is true of the opening sentence of Forager: Field Notes for Surviving a Family Cult, a memoir by Michelle Dowd ’90:
I grew up on a mountain, preparing for the Apocalypse.
That sentence is unforgettable, and it’s hardly an exaggeration. 今年早些时候由阿尔冈昆出版社出版，并得到了 Los Angeles Times, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly and other outlets, 福格尔讲述了多德10年的童年生活，他在一个名为“田野”的邪教组织中长大，在一片16英亩的土地上，她称之为“山”，位于洛杉矶国家森林(位于圣安德烈亚斯断层上)。. The book is a survivor’s testament; a memoir harrowing at times but ultimately triumphant and (from that first sentence) thoroughly engrossing.
多德解释说，虽然她每天都在山上寻找可食用的植物, her real home wasn’t a place but an idea, one that her maternal grandfather turned into the Field. Of this community Dowd writes:
田和山都由爷爷统治，他是我们世界的统治者. 爷爷说他是上帝的先知，会活到五百岁, 叫天使从天降下，把他像以利亚一样接到云里. Grandpa’s followers believed every word he said, because at the Field, he was the only one with authority. His pontifications were the soundtrack of my childhood, 他真诚地相信，除非一小群上帝的选民阻止他的手，否则上帝将对世界进行报复，这让我感到害怕.
“我的祖父决定了真相，他一直在撒谎，”多德在最近的一次采访中解释道 Participant interview. “Everyone in the Field called him ‘Grandpa,所以我小时候甚至不知道他是我的亲生祖父. It was confusing, and I never really trusted myself. 如果我问我妈问题，她就会闭嘴.”
在邪教中成长的持久影响之一是创伤，这并不奇怪, something that she confronted years later in therapy. “我们有很多人在那里，我们认为我们很好，直到我们失败，”多德说. 她必须考虑的最大问题之一是意识到她的父母不爱她或她的兄弟姐妹. “他们无法以我们任何人都能感受到的方式表达爱. They gave us up right at our births to the collective. They didn’t nurture us; didn’t hug us or say ‘I love you.’ I felt that lack from a very early age.”
“In the Field we used the word ‘unity’ a lot. It was almost like we were cheerleaders for the concept. We moved as one and everyone had a role to play.”
-Michelle Dowd ’90
AN UNEXPECTED EXPERIENCE OF THE OUTSIDE WORLD
多德早年生活中的一个重大事件发生在10岁时，当时她因可能是水痘的症状而进入洛杉矶儿童医院. 当时，多德是第一个离开邪教的领袖的孩子.
Ironically, or perhaps inevitably, 直到多德住院，她才开始意识到世界上有不同的地方. 当发现她患有特发性血小板减少性紫癜时，水痘诊断很快导致了长期隔离, 免疫系统错误地攻击血小板，需要骨髓移植的一种疾病.
Through the many months of treatments, Dowd’s mother was her only visitor, and her visits were infrequent.
多德说:“我觉得我快要被遗弃孤独地死去了。. “但当我回到社区后，我的一部分发生了变化.”
Once back at the Field, 多德发现她的祖父把她当成了替罪羊，指责她生病是因为社区里有邪恶, worse still, 多德可能是敌基督者或旧约中邪恶的耶洗别.
“But I didn’t think he was crazy,” Dowd said. “I thought I might have been Jezebel. For sure there was shame about me being sick. My mother was so embarrassed that she never told people. To most of the Field, I had just disappeared.”
米歇尔·多德(Michelle Dowd)(与她的哥哥合影)，当时她刚开始在值得信赖的十大棋牌娱乐平台大学读一年级.
PITZER AND BEYOND
17岁时，多德逃离了邪教，1986年进入了值得信赖的十大棋牌娱乐平台.
“在匹泽，人们会问我从哪里来，在哪里上的高中，”她说. “I didn’t go to high school, of course. It was uncomfortable, and I’d say I was home schooled. I just couldn’t talk about it. I didn’t know any contemporary music, television, movies. I didn’t have a way to relate.”
According to Dowd, she didn’t choose Pitzer, Pitzer chose her.
“I didn’t even apply to the College,” she said. “Somebody sent my application, which I had written with a pencil, to Pitzer, 他们给我发了一张纸条，说他们收到了我来自另一所学校的申请，他们愿意为我提供资金来值得信赖的十大棋牌娱乐平台大学.多德认为成为一名律师是一种高尚(而且有利可图)的追求, 她决定主修英语，作为她法律预科的一部分.
但当她遇到英语教授吉尔·本顿时，一切都变了. 本顿成为她的学术顾问、导师，后来成为她的朋友. 多德和她一起修了四门课，并意识到文学研究是一个令人愉快的领域，它有自己的优点，值得坚持. She decided that she wanted to share that joy with others.
After Pitzer, 多德在科罗拉多大学博尔德分校获得硕士学位，目前是库卡蒙格牧场查菲学院的新闻学教授.
RESILIENCE AND A SENSE OF COMMUNITY
多德的母亲从来没有为她童年时受到的忽视向她道歉, but Dowd believes her parents were both brainwashed. Regardless, she credits her mother, who was a skillful naturalist, with giving her survival skills, the most important one being resilience.
“I’ve been told my whole life that I’m resilient,” she said. “我认为妈妈在大自然中教给我的技能——如何环顾四周并利用你所拥有的东西——是很重要的. There is always something you can use and you’re never helpless. She taught me the opposite of helplessness.”
多德认为，生活在邪教中的另一个合格的“积极因素”是，成员们有丰富的社区意识.
“我很小的时候就明白了，家庭并不一定要有血缘关系，你们真的可以互相支持,” she said. “In the Field we used the word ‘unity’ a lot. It was almost like we were cheerleaders for the concept. We moved as one and everyone had a role to play.”
LISTENING TO HERSELF
Dowd wrote Forager in four months during the pandemic. Despite the book’s many startling incidents, she says she didn’t want to pummel the reader with “drama porn.”
“I came from a family that didn’t own a camera,” she said. In her book, 多德通过画出像任何照片一样晶莹剔透的文字图画来弥补这一点.
多德说，她一生中大部分时间都无法谈论自己的过去, but that changed with the writing of this book. 她几乎在黑暗中工作，在一间只有一根蜡烛照亮的房间里用手写书.
“I just channeled the young girl inside of me,” she said. “No one had ever listened to her. 我只是坐在那里‘听着’，她的故事就这样从我手中流淌而出.”
多德说，当你写回忆录时，真正重要的是你遗漏了什么. “You can always go deeper down the rabbit hole,” she said.
The little girl from the Field and the Mountain may be gone, 但是，取代她位置的女人已经从那个兔子洞中重新出现，这样做证明了一个时代, place, and experience unfathomable to most of us.
