The humiliating seed!

[Anonymous]

Fuck.  Yeah...I really do feel like they just completely sabotaged my life...Like I was born to the wrong parents.

Parents choose to have kids and I believe that most really need to takes some classes, do some drugs or just not have kids. Seeing that we develop a good part of our personality by 7 but all of it before we are an adult, our parents have a HUGE responsibility to take the job they chose seriously.  Of course your parents probably thought they were, which is fucked up.  I can't imagine having a child with the intention of trying to dictate their path in life.  A lot of parents do it,  mine did as well and it's hard to not be somewhat upset. I mean to me, it's just common sense. We are individuals and we should want our children to discover life and themselves and the ups and downs, truth, knowledge all that.

But you know what, if you weren't born to them you wouldn't have your beautiful daughter, so it sucked but you created something beautiful out of it none the less. Ok that's all, carry on. lol

[webdiva]

Man that is kinda a crazy post...I been thinkin on this ever since I wrote about my burnin hate for my dad.  As I thought about it more and more I began to think it wasn't so much hate as just searin desire for understanding.  I mean there was no fuckin around about it.  I looked way into him for a good long while.  I lost track of the time.  I lost track of myself.  When I came to, I noticed him lookin at me, real composed like.  I felt like I had been out of my body somewhere.

that wasn't crazy, i used to think i hated my dad, and i definitely don't like him but no need for me to hate his sorry ass.  it just takes time to really understand where its all really coming from too so that post was probably exactly how you were feeling at the time. i feel ya on the understanding thing, I think we all want to be understood and accepted for who we are,  especially by our family.  :-?

[starry-eyed pirate]

Yeah.

Can I just describe what happened a little ??

'cause I never experienced nothin like that before or since.  It felt like a once in a lifetime deal.

It felt like the most intense communication of my life.  I have no memory of the physical world during the experience.  

My dad and I were sittin at the end of a rectangular table, directly across from each other.  We were at the restaraunt that the family likes to go to when they come ta town.  It's right around the corner here.  2 of my uncles were there, 1 of which is a Vietnam vet.  His wife, 1 aunt. The oldest survivn' member of my grandparents generation; her 3rd husband who is a WW2 vet.  And all the relatives were seated together up-table.  I sat down across from my old man, who is a Vietnam vet, at one end of the table.  These people are all kind hearted folks.  

I was not doin no song and dance for no-one.  I was serious.  There were no pretenses.  I was silent unless addressed.

My dad sat across from me and I looked at him.  I looked straight into his eyes.  I lost all my senses.  I lost my sense of self.  I asked all my questions without even speaking or gesturing or moving in the least.  It took a while...I stayed there though and waited with all the patience of a mighty God.  Telepathic.

I waited til I had searched all through him for the answers.  He could not look away.  He is tricky.  Ever'body tricky.  

I don't even remember if anyone was talking around us, or to me, at all, while our eyes were locked.  I couldn't hear.  My world was silent.  I didn't know what was happening around me.  I felt as if my intelligence had left my body and gone into him through his eyes.  It was aggressive on my part, this is what I was confusing with hate.  Aggressive but not malicious at all.  It was a desperation for understanding.

I don't have any idea whether it lasted for a few seconds or 2 minutes.  No idea.  But when I came to, it was as if I had been hypnotized.  When I came back into myself I began to recognize my fathers face, his eyes on mine.  I pulled back and was cool.  He was composed and very aware.  It was real intense but not too awkward, really.  Now I am still decipherin all the abstractions I found.

Can you dig it?!

[webdiva]

Yeah.

Can I just describe what happened a little ??

...

Can you dig it?!

Well when I said it wasn't crazy i meant "the post". Fuck yeah I can dig it.   It was an intense experience, and I'm sure you were enlightened that night in a big way too, tends to go hand in hand.  Do you think you found out some what you "asked" that night?  

And it does suck cuz we can't choose our parents yet they can be fucking mental cases like my dippy dad and choose to birth or even adopt us and then still don't choose to be parents. I've never been able to even fathom not "loving" my child, if i had one. Can't conceive of it, yet there are people out there like that.

You're a great dad and should be proud. I guess dysfunctional dads like ours do exist and we have to come to terms with that, we must realize we are powerless lol how true that is though ahhaha.

so yeah, it's been dug! 8-)

[starry-eyed pirate]

Thanks, I don't really blame my dad too much.  His dad was way fucked up and was mean and abusive toward him when he was young.  

I mean what can you do ??  It's a short and merry life for us,... 'Ey lads ?!?!



 ::bandit::  :skull:  ::dove::

[shookit]

I just spent an hour and a half writing my bio, but it disappeared... nothing new for the Seed. I've been reasearching the Seed, Art, Mel, and all of the tie-ins, for three days- it reads like a John Grisham novel. My husband and my sister ( sis was incarcerated like me) say I should write the novel. Did anyone realize Bush, Sr. was in Dallas the day JFK was shot, and was trying to pin it on someone else? How did Mel Sembler get from Seedling Parent to Ambassador to Italy? My father ran the lab for E.P.A., had two Master's degrees in engineering, had worked for Battelle Memorial Institute (they did research on the effect of L.S.D. on Spiders- I remember it from Weekly Reader), but I suppose he was not wealthy enough to bilk. Sis had it a lot harder than me.. I turned 18 and walked out of the Seed, and hitchhiked into my REAL life. She graduated and was thus delayed a good twenty years.
She'll be posting soon, too. I'm the one who conned the cons.
Christie

remember two sheets of T.P?- Sis reminded me of 1,2, or 3? THAT'S why they went to the bathroom with us!

[Antigen]

Cool, welcome!

[Joy]

My sister told me about this website over the weekend.  Wow.  Brings back lots of bad memories....but I've learned that forgiving the past is extremely important, so I'll read on.  I was at the Fort Lauderdale Seed spring of '74 - January '75.  It changed my life, for sure.  It turned me into someone I didn't know for thirty years.   More later...maybe.

Joy

[GregFL]

welcome Ladies!  Have fun researching all the posts and then please tell us what you remember about your time in the seed.

[Antigen]

Hey Joy, I think I vaguely remember hearing your name from way back when. Remember any McNultys?

[Anonymous]

I was doing a search on The Seed, Fort Lauderdale, to learn whatever became of that place and Art Barker.  I stumbled across Marc Polonsky's article on his experience at the facility as a youth.  In his reply, Marc sent me a link to this message board.

Florida was supposed to be a tropical paradise with pelicans or a rare sight of a pod of dolphins swimming in the Atlantic.  Instead, it was eight months of pure hell!  I was at The Seed from August, 1978 to March, 1979, but it seemed like an eternity.  When I finally departed from that hell-hole and returned to Chicago, I did not believe that I was actually free of The Seed and Art Barker until I was actually on the flight back to the Windy City.  

The bathroom door had to be unlocked while I was doing my business, practicing my faith was prohibited (even prayer was taboo!), I surrendered my jewelry at the insistence of my oldcomer, and that's just for starters!  It was THE most difficult period of my life and it took me looong time to heal, both emotionally and psychologically.

[GregFL]

Welcome!  Marc's article was really good!

I am glad you found this website.  While it isn't as active as it once was, there is a treasure-trove of information within. Further, people can validate your experiences that until now were probably your own private hell.

I too suffered pyschological terror while in the Seed.  Many of us did, and there are valid reasons why we felt that way.  The Seed was a nightmare of  60s pop culture mixed with totalitarian hero worship and cultic 'recovery' methods that included well established techniques used on prisoners of war to modify their behavior.  These included sleep deprivation, love bombing, isolation from peers,ridicule,witholding of bathroom priviledges, family affection for submission, rejection of all outsiders, among other modalities.

How in the hell so many people were duped, I'll never understand. It speaks volumes for the collective low intelligence and gullibility of humankind

[Anonymous]

Art Barker, Libby, John Underwood and company are some of the most disgraceful human beings to ever exist.

[Anonymous]

Julio, go get some help.  

If you have that much hatred in your heart (wanting to urinate on someone's grave or hating and naming people) you need help to get rid of the anger or the anger will kill you.  Good luck with that!

[GregFL]

Who said anything remotely resembling what you are accusing her of saying?  She said they were disgraceful, and certainly the The Seed  in the early 70s was anything but something to be proud of and resulted in an entire barrage of copycat treatment centers that have abused kids right on up to...right now.

This is a disgrace.  However, I personally think that these things happened a long time ago which gives plenty of room for reflection and change on the responsible parties.   Unfortunately, we haven't really seen much evidence of this.