(This is a re-post)
Here's a submission we received from Minerva Taylor's niece. For those in the cult who are told by Sharon to do things which alienate family and friends, this is an insight on how your loved ones feel - perplexed, pained, grieving. Sharon is responsible for this misery, and so are you. I know first hand what it is like to have family shun you as a result of Sharon's insanity.
Ugh. First, I appreciate your blog. Reading this is like a knife through my heart. I am Minerva's niece, with whom, along with my parents and my brother, she "dumped" in 2006. We have all tried to "forget" her, as she commanded we do in a series of horribly hurtful letters, but in the end, it's impossible to give up on someone who you love so dearly and who meant so much to you. Everything that you have written is true, and it's not even scratching the surface. I dreamed about her last night, and did a Google search, and thus found this blog and had my heart broken all over again. I wish you could've seen how kind and beautiful, loving and wonderful she used to be. We were an exceptionally close, loving, fun family. For decades we teased her about how private and "mysterious" she was. My parents came to her rescue so many times when she would try to escape from Sharon (which of course we didn't know at the time, but pieced together long after the fact), as in the time when I was a child and woke up to find that she and my three cousins were suddenly living with us in Sacramento, having ridden all night on a Greyhound bus from New Jersey, escaping in the middle of the night from Greg, the father of my cousins, bringing along all of their worldly possessions in a beat up cardboard box. My father helped her put her life back together, cosigning for her on a house, a car, and business...things he was delighted to do for her, because he adored her. Then one day, she packed her kids up and left everything, even her dog, dumping all of her financial responsibilities on my parents, and moved quite suddenly back to NYC. We just took it in stride and chalked it up to her being "mysterious." We loved her, and didn't want to believe that anything sinister was fueling all of the unexplainable weirdness. Over the years, she suddenly had this very successful business and a gorgeous house in he Hamptons - how? We chalked it up to her being smart and savvy. She married Fred, and we became exceptionally close to his three kids, who are wonderful people. We remained very close, and she would always skirt questions about the details of her life until the Internet made it so that she could no longer deny them. At my cousin's wedding, Sharon and Alex were present, and they were treated like royalty, to the point that we were all like, "okayyyy. This is beyond really weird...we've GOT to figure out what the hell is going on." After that, my brother, who was living in NYC and had by that point pretty much figured it out, confronted her about it. She immediately disowned him, and then wrote my parents a 10 page letter telling them what horrible people they were. She wrote me a letter telling me that I was "ungrateful" because I hadn't written her a thank you note for a book she had sent to my newborn son. Just like that, my loving, beautiful aunt dropped us from her life like a hot rock. You would not believe the cruel and hurtful things she wrote to my father, who remains completely devastated over the loss of his sister. For me, she was my everything - my beautiful hippie aunt who taught me about the Mahabarata and the Beatles, the mother to my cousins who I still to this day love and miss as much I could love and miss anyone. She has left us in an unending state of mourning, and so confused as to what in the world we could've ever done to her to deserve such vitriol and outright hatred.
One thing I want to say, and that I would say to HER given the opportunity, is that if you want to do this with your life, fine. Clearly we can't stop you. But understand that you have destroyed many lives, and for WHAT? You are responsible for an inordinate amount of pain. And there's no philosophizing it away: YOU are SOLELY responsible. 1) She STOLE my relationship with my cousins, who even as adults are so conflicted about all of this and feel such loyalty to her that we no longer speak - utterly devastating - I want my relationship with them back. 2) She DESTROYED her family, stealing a full-blooded sister away from my three cousins. Side note on that: I have no doubt that she was absolutely commanded to that against her will. She hired private detectives to find this girl, my cousin, and take pictures of her on the school playground and give her constant updates on her life. 3) She nearly killed my father, who loved her so fiercely, by cutting him off - cutting us all off - and BLAMING IT ON US in the most horrible, hurtful manner you can imagine. Thank god my grandparents aren't alive to see what she has done and the pain she has caused my family. If anyone has ANY doubt as to the power of this group, I hope that I have given you a sliver of proof. Powerful enough to make a person from the most awesome, loving family you can ever imagine not give two shits about completely destroying the lives of their own children and their exceptionally loving immediate family. We will never get over the pain. We will never stop hoping. I know that beautiful woman is still inside somewhere. I will never stop thinking that she will come back to us.
Sorry for the length of this, but I get the feeling you'll forgive my lack of brevity. Thank you for all that you have done to expose these people.
