Growing up in polygamy
is a trap. You basically have no identity
I was raised by my father's
Mexican wives in Mexico while my mother, who was American, worked in the United States to help support my father's four
wives and huge family. All of her kids were shifted from one wife to another. I really didn't know my own brothers and
sisters that well. It was like being an orphan.
None of us could associate
with the outside world until we had to go to school. This was by law or we wouldn't have been allowed to do that. That
was when I really began to see how isolated we were. At first I thought that people saw and treated us differently because
we were Americans but, little by little, I found out that it wasn't just that. I saw that the other children had only
one mother and one father. It made me realize even more what I was missing. Still, I was very afraid to say anything or ask
any questions of my parents until I was older.
At the age of thirteen, right
after I started my period, my mother and father tried to marry me off to men in our cult who were even older than my own father!
They told us that, as girls, we could not marry out of our religion or out of our own race. I refused to marry. I gave them
every reason I could think of, including that I was still playing with dolls. I don’t know how I got away with it -
my older sisters were married off to older men when they were very young.
We
moved a lot and, when I was seventeen, we moved to Jinotega, Nicaragua, and there I actually got to live with my own mother
for awhile. But I didn’t know her very well and was often afraid of her. I was at the dating age and really wanted to
go to school and meet new friends, but my father moved us out of Jinotega into a jungle that was three days away from civilization
called El Bocai. I was there for one week and that was when I really became rebellious. I told my mom that I was not going
to stay there and somehow I was going to get back to Jinotega! Fortunately, my older brother, Kelly, was married and living
there so I had a place to stay.
After me pleading and arguing that I would
never marry if I was only around family, my father finally agreed to take me back to Jinotega when he went. But all of the
way back, he kept telling me that I was breaking God's commandments by not honoring him. At that point, I didn't care,
I let it go in one ear and out the other.
I lived with my brother for six
months, and then my father, who was by then suffering from gallstones, gathered us all together and brought us into the United
States. After a tortuous nineteen day trip with twenty-two people squeezed into an old UPS van, we landed in San Diego. There
were times on that trip that we felt like we were suffocating! My father nearly died from his sickness.
At the age of nineteen, I met a Mexican man named Humberto Barrios. He was a Catholic. I didn't
care what my parents said, and I married him and had two children. From then on I had nothing to do with my mom's and
dad's cult, but my past would not let me have peace. I suffered from anxiety, inferiority, and a pain inside me so deep
that I turned to alcohol to try to stop it. When that didn’t work, I tried to take my own life. It has taken me over
thirty years to face my past and deal with my agony.
I was too unhappy
and confused to make wise choices and I went through two marriages. On the third I got lucky. I found a wonderful husband
who has stood by me through Hell. I couldn't even appreciate him before, but now I can see how much he put up with and
am very grateful. At the age of fifty-one, I am beginning to see the light.
I
want people to know that polygamy is not the beautiful principle and lifestyle that some people try to claim it is. My mother,
who at first believed polygmay was a part of God's plan for men and women, ended up leaving it too after suffering
unbearable heartache. For years before her death, she told people that polygamy was a destroyer of natural affection.
No matter what the polygamists say, it is usually terrible for the children.
I know this from personal experience and that is why I am sharing my story with you.