Sure, I made mistakes. We all do.

 I was a bright-eyed, idealistic, 27-year-old who just happened to make a few big mistakes early in life. Like a bad marriage, a worse divorce, and a monumentally dumb three-year affair with my married boss. Oh, and a slide down into drug use and alcohol dependency.

Naturally, I was looking for answers. And that led me to spending the next twenty years of my life as a Scientology True Believer.

I got huge benefits at first — off drugs, out of the affair, running my life better in every way. But this changed over the years as I got sucked in more and more, eventually ending up at the top of the Scientology food chain, in international management,

behind barbed wire and watched by guards while I wrote deathless prose about the wonders of Scientology to spoon-feed to the masses.

As I continued to descend into the mire of coercive control, I couldn’t even see that there was a better life. But in August, 2007, that silent inner voice would no longer stay silent, and I escaped with just the clothes on my back and a few items in my purse.

I thought escaping Scientology would be the toughest thing I ever did. But it was just the start of the tough things. I had no idea who I was anymore, what I believed versus what Scientology indoctrinated into me, and what I would actually be able to do with the rest of my life.

I felt I’d wasted “the best years” and that the rest of life would be a struggle.

But life didn’t turn out that way, mostly because I didn’t let it. I worked hard to deconstruct things so that I’d never be sucked into that kind of situation again. And one small step at a time, I rebuilt my life from, as I like to say, below square zero.

The hardest part wasn't the logistics. It was learning to trust again — especially myself. For twenty years, someone else held the pen on my life. Getting it back meant relearning things most people take for granted: that I was allowed to want things. That my time was mine. That I could change my mind, take a whole afternoon to cook a meal nobody was timing, and not have to justify a single second of it.

At first, it was a marvel to be able to just go out and wander around a shopping mall, without being followed or watched. To be able to eat whatever I wanted, without being told that I wasn’t allowed to have that or that I didn’t earn it. To read for pleasure… instead of spending hours a day reading L. Ron Hubbard’s writings so I could be a good little Scientology soldier.

These days my life is full in a way I once couldn't have imagined. My wonderful husband, who loves me as I actually am. Three stepkids and eight grandkids who are pure noise and color and joy. Friends who feel like the family you get to choose. A name that's fully, finally, beautifully my own.

I won't pretend it's all tied up neatly — some things you keep putting back together for the rest of your life. But I get to do that work in a life I built on purpose, in the open, with my own two hands. And after two decades of being told what to think, I've learned

there's nothing quite as good as deciding for myself, out loud, and without apology.

That's what I write about now: not the years I lost, but everything that turned out to be possible after. If any of that lands where you are, I'm glad you found your way here. Stay a while.