Actress Glenn Close recently opened up about her childhood and what it was like for her growing up. She also confessed that she was raised in a cult where she as not allowed to be herself and was controlled by the leaders.
“[For years], I wouldn’t trust any of my instincts because [my beliefs] had all been dictated to me,” the 67-year-old said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
“You basically weren’t allowed to do anything, or you were made to feel guilty about any unnatural desire. If you talk to anybody who was in a group that basically dictates how you’re supposed to live and what you’re supposed to say and how you’re supposed to feel, from the time you’re 7 till the time you’re 22, it has a profound impact on you. It’s something you have to [consciously overcome] because all of your trigger points are [wrong],” she added.
Close’s father took his family to live at the headquarters of the religious cult Moral Re-Armament, when she was only seven. She left when she was 22 and enrolled in college.
Glenn Close reveals childhood spent in a cult http://t.co/oj7DCF0uN4 pic.twitter.com/RnmvzdnpZa
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She said that she was often haunted by the cult and her past but learned to overcome it. She said that although she was angry with her family and many members and leaders of the cult for a long time, she had to forgive them in order to move on and be happy.
“I always thought, the way life works, the burden of forgiveness is on the child,” divulged Close. “That’s the way it goes. Forgiveness is probably the most revolutionary concept there is right now in our world. Because without forgiveness, you just perpetuate what has been before. You [have to] say, ‘It’s going to stop with me.’”