Consider the world of a young girl who never knew what a normal family was like, and didn’t experience the traditional love of a mother or father. For her, home meant several families all jumbled up together. After the age of five, her mother worked long hours away from home, and she was often left alone or cared for by mothers of other children. Her chief male authority was not her father, but the group’s charismatic, heavy-handed leader. Only later would she come to understand: this community was a cult.
Nita’s Clark’s cobbled-together family worked as a unit for the good of the group. The followers were free to choose an outside career; however, almost all of their salary was handed over to the leader. There was child abuse, and the adults were not treated much better.
Astonishingly, Clark survived the abuse and dogma that infused everything she knew from the moment of her birth. Through self-reflection and confronting difficult memories, the young girl was able to transform into a woman who has found peace, and now lives her life free from the oppression of her past. Clark’s intimate memoir, Nowhere Girl, is the finishing touch on her incredible, therapeutic journey.