Book Review/Heather Seggel

Getting Out, Coming Out, Moving On

In the US, our curiosity about cults is both prurient and apparently insatiable. I plugged the word into a search engine and it came back with the option to search “cults near me,” as if I was hungry for sushi (there are apparently nine “infamous” and for the most part inactive ones, but a few hours south ten that are still accepting members). In “Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing: Essays” (Vintage), author Lauren Hough describes growing up in the Children of God cult, an experience that took her around the world, fragmenting her family and sense of self in the process. The book is about the cult, but also about life afterwards, and trying to rebuild an identity on that shaky foundation.

Hough succeeds when she draws the reader close, then extends a mirror and asks us to consider whether our own lives under capitalism are so different from the far out, freaky world in which she was raised.

The memoir in essays format serves the story well. We open with Hough leaving the Air Force, after anonymous threats to kill her escalate to her new car being torched. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” did little to protect gay servicemembers, so Hough only needed to formally come out to secure a discharge, but then she was on her own. Several low paying jobs and sketchy living situations followed before she took on steady work with a cable company (a popular Huffington Post essay about that job is folded into the book). She managed to build a modest middle-class life, but almost as soon as she’d locked onto the brass ring, it began to lose its luster; she ultimately sold her house and possessions, hopped in a Winnebago and roamed around, settling in Austin.

It’s possible to drift on the rhythm of the stories themselves and the feeling of constant reinvention in new places, but those individual strands begin to form a web of connecting details. The Children of God evolved into a “sex cult,” with partner swapping and sexual abuse of children; Hough escaped the experience with her virginity intact, only to be raped while in the Air Force. She stays high much of the time after that until breaking down one day at her cable job, which finally leads to a PTSD diagnosis through the Veterans Administration and prescription meds that flatten life out completely. Detoxing from them offers another shot at something real and tangible.

I first heard about “Leaving” a few months before its release date. I reached out to the publisher and was told I’d get a copy as soon as one was available, and only remembered the exchange after seeing it was on sale; the book never showed up. Hough is a popular presence on Twitter, smart and funny and quick to overshare. She ended up having a minor public meltdown on the site when the book came out, after a few GoodReads reviewers gave it high praise, but four star reviews because it wasn’t possible to award an additional half star. She claimed to have been joking, or trying to make a point about the arbitrary nature of the five star system, but came across as bitter and mean. In response, several people who had not read the book left one star reviews to try to tank her average. It seems to have worked; despite near-universal acclaim, it currently shows up with a three star average, though the impact that has had on sales is not clear.

Both of these things weighed upon my experience with the book. Tracking a copy down well after I’d hoped to have read it was frustrating, and Hough’s social media presence lost any charm it once held. But many of the things she describes resonated deeply with me, particularly her restless dissatisfaction and hunger for true belonging. She is canny about drawing parallels between life in a cult and life in poverty. The military can offer a way out of that, but you will still be waking up, going to bed, dressing and acting according to orders from on high. If you want some nitty gritty stories about hippies with wild beliefs, you will find them here (and you can still find the Children of God out in the world, though they’re called the Family now.). But there’s more at stake here. “Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing” is a harrowing adventure, a series of escape rooms all located in the body of one person who thankfully had the skill and persistence to conjure forth the key.

Heather Seggel is a writer living in Northern California. Email heatherlseggel@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, August 15, 2021

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