Where would I have been in life without all this? I lost so much time.
This is one of the most common questions people ask after leaving a cult. But while it’s a valid question, it may not be the best one.
You’re not wrong about the lost time. Those years are passed. The missed celebrations, the education you put off for paradise, the relationships you never formed, the career paths you might have loved but saw as impossible or off-limits—it’s all real. Your grief is justified. So is the anger
But there’s a bigger truth here: how you relate to those losses determines where you go next. You can’t go back. But you can decide what you carry forward with you.
It’s Not Your Fault
Let’s get this part straight first: being in a cult doesn’t mean you were naive, broken, or gullible. It means the conditions were right. And some of the strongest predictors of susceptibility? Idealism. Loyalty. A desire for meaning. Or—let’s not forget—being born into it and never given a real choice in the first place.
Given the right circumstances, anybody can get sucked in. You were doing what you believed was right at the time. That’s not weakness. That’s being human.
And when you finally realized it wasn’t right? You had a moral obligation to face it. But not before. You can’t be held responsible for a truth you hadn’t yet grasped.
Born In? Then They Stole Your Starting Line
If you were born into the group, you didn’t have the same starting line as everyone else. You were handed a map with entire sections missing—landmarks erased, routes mislabeled, choices scribbled out—and told to find your way like everyone else.
There was no informed consent. No alternative worldview. No “free will” about whether to join. Your development was filtered through obedience, fear, and thought reform techniques dressed up as moral high ground.
So yeah, it’s not just that you lost time. Your whole worldview was hijacked. That takes more than a calendar to repair. You weren’t just delayed. You were deliberately rerouted.
As cult researcher Alexandra Stein explains, true recovery is about “developing the capacity to think one’s own thoughts, feel one’s own feelings, and make one’s own choices free from the leader’s control.”
—Terror, Love and Brainwashing
Would You Be Further Without It?
Of course. But would you be who you are now? That’s a much bigger question.
This isn’t about silver linings. You don’t have to make peace with the abuse to acknowledge what you made out of the aftermath.
We all have to come to terms with this somehow.
For me, I asked myself, ‘Would I have been a good person without the trauma and weirdo cult baggage?’ Sure.
But I would have been a different person, too. And I like the me I’ve got well enough.
Growing up on the fringes in a weird, isolated and very toxic subculture gave me a very particular perspective. I understand things about group dynamics, conformity, control, manipulation—and how gaslighting can feel like clarity when you’re raised deep in a fog—in ways many people never have to.
I value freedom of choice and authentic love in a way most couldn’t. Because I know what it’s like to be without it.
I KNOW my values and morals—because I built every single one of them from the ground up.
I also know for a fact I can start over. And I know how much it matters to respect not only others, but in particular, myself.
I value who I am because I chose to become this person. And I’m not sorry for a second of it.
Bitterness Is a Rest Stop—Not a Destination
Anger is appropriate. Resentment is actually a survival response—think of it as an internal alarm system that kicks in when you’ve been gaslit, dismissed, or forced to suppress your own identity for too long. But long-term bitterness? That’s just another trap.
Not because it’s “wrong” or unjustified, but because it’s just more life the cult gets to steal from you.
So be mad! Grieve. Swear at the sky. But also keep your eye on what adds to your life—and what doesn’t. You already spent years waiting on someone else’s version of paradise. Why not take what you’ve learned through it to build your own?
As trauma specialist Bessel van der Kolk reminds us:
“Trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on mind, brain, and body.” — The Body Keeps the Score
The imprint is there, whether we like it or not. The impact isn’t going away. So do something with it! Meaning-making isn’t just an intellectual act—it’s how we metabolize trauma into purpose.
Now What?
You don’t have to pretend it didn’t matter. But you also don’t have to let it define the rest of your life’s journey, either.
You may not have had a choice then, but you do now. You can let it eat at you, or you can extract what’s useful and count that as compensation.
Not as a way to excuse the damage. But as a way to make damn sure it ends with you—and not inside you.
The truth is, you lost time. That’s real. You’d be totally justified in resenting it. But you also gained something most people can never touch: a vivid, deep, and hard-earned understanding of control, conscience, and what it actually means to be free.
That kind of insight rewires you. So maybe the real question isn’t “what about the lost time?”
Maybe it’s what are you going to do with the time you fought to own?
