Disclaimer: The information presented and opinions expressed are solely the author's. Names have been changed to protect identities. The only names kept true are leadership.
It is important to note that this author is still working through their story. They will be continuing to share/add as they write and send them in. They want it known that these are just small "clips" of what they endured on the farm and not even close to the full story .
I had gotten very close with my facilitator, K, she cared about me a lot, and I did her as well. Rhonda decided we were "too close", and that we had a soul tie. There was also a lot of talk of me being a "Jezebel spirit" - and that K only loved me because I had charmed her and manipulated her. But that is another story for another time. Just too painful and honestly still too confusing to get into right now. I also still don't understand it. It still confuses me and makes me really sad. Anyway, because of this, they switched me to another facilitator. It is very, very hard for me to trust people and to open up to people. Especially about my childhood trauma. This transition was especially hard because I had just begun to open up to K, and the switch made me feel like opening up had been a mistake and I had done something wrong in disclosing some of my trauma and being vulnerable with her.
I was switched to BV, she is a nice lady, but I didn't know her well, I also didn't vibe with her super well. Because I had been there a few months by this point, there was a lot of pressure to be really vulnerable in God Encounters. This was confusing to me because I felt like I had been punished by being taken away from K because I was vulnerable with her, but now I'm being told I have to dig deep into my trauma with Bev who I didn't yet feel comfortable with. The pressure was high. I was told I would be kicked off the Farm if I wasn't digging deep into my trauma during my GE's. This was so so so bad for me for so many reasons... I did NOT feel safe at the Farm for so many reasons that I can't even get into yet... but if I could describe my time at the Farm in 2 words it would be FEAR and CONFUSION.
Anyway, I started digging into my trauma with my new facilitator like they told me to... and I started having a lot of unpleasant PTSD symptoms flare up. One of which... because the abuse had started so young, and I was digging into it while not feeling safe in my environment... I was having night terrors and one night after my GE, I actually wet the bed. It was around 1 AM. Crying, I went to my house leader, B, because I didn't know what to do, and we were always told to go to the house leader for things like this. She instructed me to go try to sleep on the couch. I most definitely could not sleep, so I just sat on the couch silently crying the rest of the night until everyone woke up for work (around 5am). I was completely exhausted, having barely gotten any sleep, plus just the overwhelming emotions, I was barely coherent that morning. When my house leader walked into the living room, she instructed me that I better hurry up and get ready for work. Through tears I told her I was so exhausted and asked if I could rest. She was very cold and just said no. I stood there for a moment, exhausted, and still crying, just trying to muster up the mental and physical energy to go get ready for a full day of work. And she said to me again, "Go get ready for work now. Or you will be asked to leave the Farm. Now." The threat of having to leave the Farm was thrown at me so often, and it always worked... because I was so desperate for healing and I was convinced that the Farm was the only place that could help me. I obeyed my house leader and went to work.
This was only one small thing that occured while I was there. A few other tiny little things I will add is that they ABSOLUTELY charge $300 a month to be there. This is a WHOLE other long story in and of itself for me personally. Another quick story I will share is, at one point during my time there, someone had donated $1,000 for EACH resident. That day, our workday had been interrupted and we were all called to the Refuge because Rhonda had something important to talk about. Work very rarely got interrupted so everyone was VERY curious what was going on, and personally, I was terrified. But we get there and Rhonda comes out. She looks SO SERIOUS. There is definitely fear and tension in the room. We are all anticipating what she is going to say. She starts off by telling a story from the Bible about a husband and wife (Ananias and Sapphira) who went to the temple and lied about how much money they had, and God struck them dead. She tells it in much more detail, and talked about how important it is to give all of our money to God and also that it was a sin to have a savings account because that means you aren't trusting God.
After this very intense sermon, she handed out all the checks. I, and several others, immediately gave our $1,000 check back to Harvest Home.