Bel Baca

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In the beginning

September 29, 2015 by BelBaca Leave a Comment

One of my best friends Nova, some years ago, handed me a book and said “Read this!” We were standing in her kitchen in Valley Village and her babies were running around. The book was a green dog-eared copy of Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris. Up until then I hadn’t much read nonfiction books. But I found Sedaris’ personal essays recounting his growing up in a large family with six siblings, outrageously funny and one book later, I was hooked.

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As a reviewer on Amazon* put it, “If you like witty and humorous stories about alcoholics and dysfunctional families, you will like this.” I did, and I loved Sedaris. Since then I’ve read his six personal essay books (all of which have happened to be immediate best sellers). They’re oddball, touching on such varied topics as “taxidermied owls and Pygmies” or “the bliss of colonoscopy sedation,” and as a NPR writer Helen McAlpin wrote, the best Sedaris Essays have “surprisingly moving conclusions about the nature of love.” 

I can’t say how long it was after that, but I began to think “I grew up in a big family! I have stories!” If Sedaris could make someone like myself find humor in the dysfunction and get a case of the feels, I thought that perhaps I could do the same for other peeps. Several friends I’d told about my crazy big family had already said “You should write a book,” but I’d always thought “(Yawn), who would want to read that?” 

But Sedaris had inspired me. I put fingers to keyboard and began to type, recalling outrageous stuff that happened when I was a kid. But then I it hit me. My family was big and different because we’d been in a radical Christian group, a detail of my life I’d tried to distance myself from. So I hesitated. If I did write my stories, by God, I would have to include zealotry shiznit, because to not do so would not only be untruthful, but would make no sense. “Well why did your Dad have two wives living in the home?” My future reader might ask and it would just get too damned confusing.

It took long conversations with friends, Googling others’ stories, and much thought, after which I decided that for the thousands of children born into the group, the cause of greater understanding, for my siblings, and for myself, I would talk. So I’ve been writing. 

*If you use this link to order Me Talk Pretty, I get money (it’ll go to charity, pay for this site, and the like). Same for David Sedaris’ books Barrel Fever: Stories and Essays, Naked, Holidays on Ice, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, and When You are Engulfed in Flames. 

Filed Under: Child of God Unauthorized, David Sedaris Tagged With: Bel Baca, big family, blog, book, child abuse, Children of God, Christian, Christian hypocrisy, David Berg, David Sedaris, Family International, healing, human rights, hypocrisy, Inspiration, Karen Zerby, love, Me Talk Pretty One Day, memoir, NPR, polygamy, religion, religious hypocrisy, second generation cult member, sex, sex cult, story, storytelling, survivor story, trauma, Valley Village, writer

Mind over boobs

September 24, 2015 by BelBaca Leave a Comment

I was walking South on Ivar Ave, near Sunset Boulevard one day, back when I’d first moved to LA, when someone a block away yelled, “I LIKE YOUR FAKE LA BOOBS!” I happened to be wearing a loose tunic shirt, so that was odd. I yelled back “THANKS! BUT THEY’RE REAL, AND THEY’RE SPECTACULAR*!”

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photo by Daniel Marin

A stranger had given me a phony compliment, and I’d corrected them while quoting Seinfeld, because God forbid a stranger think something about me that wasn’t true. At the time I felt differently about myself than I do now. I had gained a lot of weight, and was fluffier.

I ate ravenously to cover trauma and pain. I would only heal from it when I met a person who loved me more for my mind than anything else. We’d talk for hours about social theories, TV shows, politics, relationships, or our screwball families, punctuated by unabated laughter at something one of us had said such as “I don’t plan on having any children that are related to my parents!”

He took it upon himself to shop for my groceries and bought the best food in WeHo that he could find because he wanted me to not only deeply enjoy what I ate, but to be healthy. His months of love in action, in the way I needed it, were more powerful than all the preaching I could ever be subjected to. His love healed me of hating my body, of judging it, of seeing it primarily as a vehicle to please a man. Because to him I wasn’t a body, though he saw my body as valuable because it housed my mind, his favorite thing about me. He helped my mind become my favorite thing about me too.

*I’d originally written “fantastic” in place of “spectacular.” That was incorrect. I was writing around 4am and mixed my words. Many apologies.

 

Filed Under: Child of God Unauthorized, Healing in Humor Tagged With: Bel Baca, big family, blog, body image, book, child abuse, Children of God, Christian, Christian hypocrisy, David Berg, eating disorder, fake boobs, Family International, Hollywood, human rights, hypocrisy, Karen Zerby, LA, love, memoir, religion, religious hypocrisy, Seinfeld, sex, sex cult, story, storytelling, survivor story, trauma, WeHo, West Hollywood

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