Diamond Mind
Science, philosophy, spirituality, technology, green energy, current affairs. Hosted by scholar, activist and author, Tam Hunt.
Diamond Mind
Diamond Mind #13: What the Hiippies Got Wrong: A Conversation with Understanding Ruth Israel About the Love Family
What happens when the dream of utopia meets the messy reality of human nature? Understanding Ruth Israel's remarkable journey takes us deep inside one of America's most prominent counterculture experiments—the Love Family commune of Seattle.
In this raw and revelatory conversation, Ruth shares her transformation from Claudette Baker Rockefeller—married into political prominence—to a barefoot hippie renamed "Understanding" by the commune's charismatic leader. For 26 years, she navigated this highly structured patriarchal society while caring for numerous children, witnessing both the beauty and darkness of communal living in the 1970s and 80s.
Understanding doesn't flinch from difficult truths: the drug use that began as spiritual exploration and ended in addiction and abuse; the sexual liberty that devolved into exploitation; the disturbing patterns of child abuse she eventually confronted, leading to her expulsion from the community, not once but twice!
Her stories illuminate why so many sought alternatives to mainstream society while exposing how alternative communities can recreate—and sometimes magnify—the very problems they aimed to escape.
Most powerful are her reflections on the aftermath: the disproportionate rates of suicide, addiction, and mental illness among those who grew up in the commune, and her continuing relationships with survivors. Despite witnessing these tragedies, she maintains hope for better models of community living, offering wisdom for today's intentional community builders.
This conversation isn't just about a specific historical moment—it's about timeless questions of power, belonging, and responsibility. Whether you're interested in counterculture movements, communal living experiments, or simply understanding how idealistic dreams can go awry, Understanding's perspective offers invaluable insights from someone who's lived through the full arc of utopian aspiration and reckoning.
Neither the Diamond Mind podcast nor Tam Hunt are endorsing the truth of Understanding's statements. We are sharing her voice and her truth in an effort to continue a long-overdue dialogue about what the hippies got right and what they got wrong. Tam is finalizing an exciting book project: The Hippies Were Right! About Consciousness, and Everything Else, and this interview is part of the research for that book.
My name is Understanding Ruth Israel and that's legal as of 1972. My name before that was Claudette Baker Rockefeller and I had married into a second cousin of Nelson Rockefeller and he was very active in politics. He worked for the Republicans in Washington DC at the time and so I did cross paths with some of his Democratic friends who had crossed paths with Dr Martin Luther King and his staff, robert Kennedy, nixon's writers, people like that and then through various spiritual encounters, I ended up being very disenchanted with the Love Family and I had a very, very deep spiritual experience and I and I dropped out and I found a love family in 1972. And during the divorce proceedings the judge asked me what they called me up there and I said Understanding who's Israel? And so he said well, that's your legal name then now, because the Rockefeller didn't want me running around with naked people up there using the name Rockefeller, you know.
Speaker 2:Wow. So the judge just said just kind of spontaneously that's your legal name from henceforth.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 1:Yes, so it was legal With the divorce decree. It was legal. I carry that paperwork with me too, because people don't believe you when I throw in my name. And then I lived there for 26 years. Off and on, I got kicked out twice, but I did manage to make 26 years there, and my main focus in the family was the children. I had two daughters in the Rockefeller family, which, of course, when I joined the hippies I lost custody of them and Phil made it, so I could hardly even see him, except he was there. I was treated like I was a pervert or something, and so I the only thing to save me was to just throw myself because I was brokenhearted. I was a very, very devoted mother and uh you didn't try to fight for custody we couldn't.
Speaker 1:We didn't have any lawyers. I tried, but he was a lawyer. He was a lawyer. It was at the time we got the divorce. He was the head of health, education and welfare for Region 10 here and he had ties to the judges. I mean, he was so powerful and I was just a little naked to be running around up there with a bunch of weirdos, weirdos and he had me actually, um, put in three mental institutions, which I always escaped and ran away and got back. You know that's how. Actually, how I found the family was cleaning one of them and running into somebody that says oh, those people up in queen anne will even visions, why don't you go see them? And so, uh, when I came to the, I threw myself into the children because the children were. Nobody wanted to be with the kids. It was most people were young. I was one of the older ones. I was 30 when I joined the family. Most people were like in 1920, 21. The last thing they wanted to do was be with kids.
Speaker 1:And there was only like five or six kids at that time and they were loved kids. Sirius had a child child, a couple other kids that came and went, and that was about it, and then a couple kids that just got abandoned. I mean, people just left them there and I took them on, and so then, uh, eventually the kids the number of the kids that lived with me probably defaulted to around 10 or 15, because the house caught fire one time and I remember I always counted the kids every night and I knew a milson one it's going to go back in there find them, you know. So there's a uh, so uh.
Speaker 1:During that time we had homes in seattle and then a man named richness joined and he brought, uh, one or two million dollars I think it was two, but you think back, you know, in the late 70s that was a lot of money and the family grew. We bought a big ranch, 300 acres, and then he bought a farm up in ohoma, alaska, and then another man joined that had a horse ranch, so uh, and then another man joined that had a cannery. So we grew and during that time we were a highly structured patriarchal society, but we really were counterculture hippies. We were experimenting with drugs for spiritual enhancement. We were sexually liberal and meant to have as many wives or wives we didn't call them wives, you know partners and the women were not expected to be that liberal, though they were expected to be, you know, faithful to one man. And then we wanted to go back to Let me ask.
Speaker 2:So I didn't realize that. So women had they were supposed to be faithful quote, unquote whereas men could have as many partners as they wanted to.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And the more. Yeah, correct.
Speaker 1:And if you were an elder, you got your own bedroom. So if you had your own bedroom, you could have paramours, right. And the other men all lived in bunks in a general room and the women lived usually in a general room in bunks together. And then every home had an elder lady and that didn't mean she was the preferred sexual partner, but she was a sexual partner to the elder. But maybe she wasn't the favorite wife, okay.
Speaker 1:But she had the power. She went to elder ladies meeting and she had the power. And so we other than the one thing we differed with, the hippie model, which is counterculture using drugs for spiritual enhancement drop out of society. We were patriarchally highly structured, so that would be the one difference. But other than that, we wore the clothes of the hippies, we made our own clothes. They were long Men were long-haired. We didn't have jobs traditionally in the world. We emphasized spiritual being and different times and means, we did exploration with drugs for spiritual enhancement and enrichment. And all of those things also led to our downfall. Because when the drugs first started, when I joined, we had something called tell you all, and it was a rug cleaner, but people were smelling it and two people died.
Speaker 1:I joined in like oh, no way, wow okay yeah, yeah, I joined in march and I think it was january. February. Reverence and validity died and it got in the newspaper because the family kept their bodies okay yeah, tell you all is is it was a rug cleaner, and what they would family would do is they would put it on a piece of cloth and then put uh in a plastic bag over your nose and your mouth and breathe it in and people would have spiritual uh illusion, spiritual uh sightings.
Speaker 1:Right, and we thought that was a good idea, people didn't realize it was potentially fatal well, what happened is these two guys experimented on their own love, talked me into doing it once and I decided I'd never do it again. And he said, well, that's okay, we can always have somebody that's not into drugs, right. And even then I already was working with the kids and I was like I can't do this, I have to be a normal person. You know, I came with a teacher's license as a mother, and so he didn't push me under pressure to do drugs after that. But sometimes I did drugs because they would put it in. One time I sold a bunch of cookie dough and it had lsd in it and you know, uh, I did experiment some with drugs myself too. And then pot, you know, was always passed around right, but I also.
Speaker 1:I also gave up pot because I couldn't really keep a routine with the kids smoking pot. You know they go. We're hungry.
Speaker 1:I'm like, oh man, no, we'll have food eventually. That didn't work. So the tell you all after tell you all then it was, of course pot was always there. We had Maui, waui, papo, loco, you know Alaska, there's all kinds of different pots, and then LSD, and then after LSD, of course shrooms were also big. And then once we started going to the rainbow gatherings, then shrooms came into our life and peyote, not so much but magic mushrooms, you could find them. You know they were always around, but magic mushrooms, you could find them. You know they were always around. And then, and then, a guy that was kind of a little friendly person that bought LSD and bought in, oh, molly, or ecstasy. Yeah, he bought in ecstasy. And then, and then, what happened?
Speaker 1:When Richman started the family, richard had a cocaine habit and he brought the money and the habit and slowly, slowly, the drug ate away the center of our leadership, starting with love. And I know I'm telling you stuff. I personally know because felicity and I got invited up to a meeting one time and it was all the elders and they were all doing lines of this white stuff and I said what's that? And honestly said, oh, something will make you love, uh, better and everybody stayed up all night. Well, I had to go back with Felicity and watch. The kids were all getting up, I couldn't go to bed, right. So Felicity and I had a pact that we would never do that again. So we'd always be there for each other, for the kids. And then you can watch and people became addicted. And then you know that.
Speaker 1:And then the sexual liberties. At first it was great. Like a guy could have, you know, as many women as he wanted. But then love decided he could have every woman he wanted, right, right. But that would tie him to all the households and he'd call in the middle of the night for people to come up and some of the men started to resent that.
Speaker 1:And so some of the elders looked around, and now we're getting into the 80s, you know like 82, around in there and they're like okay, we don't have any money, it's all going for Love's nose and some of the other elders. Love wasn't doing it by himself. There were other elders doing it with him too, and eventually he it was just him and a couple, but at first it was a whole bunch of them, all the significant elders. And then, um, the money started drying up and people were having families and children, right and they're.
Speaker 1:You know that the sexual liberties and the drugs were probably the two main reasons for the downfall in 82, because love had his hand on the money and, um, the a lot of the brotherhood. The elders got together and they said they presented a level paper saying you know, you can be the spiritual, you can deal with spiritual things, but you can't deal with the money. You can't have our lives, you know. And he just tore it up and they made a pact that if he didn't agree they'd all walk out. So that's when the family first fell apart and then I still had all the kids. I couldn't go, I didn't have anywhere to go with all those kids, so I stayed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let me back up real quick. Yeah, this is a really interesting history and you're, of course, encapsulating, like you know, two decades of history in just a few minutes. Let's kind of set the stage a bit more for those who aren't really familiar with the commune history in the US, which, as you and I both know well, has a kind of cyclical history. There's been various cycles of back to the land movements in the US and certainly the movement in the 60s and 70s was, I'd say, the second to last movement in the US. I think we're in the latest one right now. The latest one right now.
Speaker 2:And I was in the commune briefly, less than a year, when I was 10, 11 years old, and so I was born in 71.
Speaker 2:I basically joined the Love Family because my brother had kind of joined after visiting with my mom and stepdad, and he decided he wanted to stay with the Love Family. I heard about it down in California, where I was staying with my dad. We hitchhiked up the Washington hippie style and I went and visited with you all in Seattle at the Front Doran, et cetera, and I decided at the ripe old age of 10, hey, dad, can I stay here too? And dad was like of course, son, why not? You know that's what they did back then, right, of course, why not you stay with us? You know random hippie commune. So they basically farmed me out to definitions household Ranch near Arlington, you know, an hour north of Seattle, so kind of the, the main satellite camps of the whole love family and I think at the time is around 350 people, so pretty big Commune and I think maybe like a hundred people in arlington, like maybe 100 people in seattle than 150 straight elsewhere, is that roughly right?
Speaker 1:yeah, that's roughly right. The last passover we were all together.
Speaker 2:I was in charge of counting the coffee cups and we had 350 people at that last yeah, that's the figure I recall from back in the day when I was literally 10 years old, 11 years old. So that's kind of I recall from back in the day when I was literally 10 years old, 11 years old. So that's kind of setting the stage. And you know, recently I was actually hanging out with a friend of mine who has kind of an interest in this stuff and we looked at some YouTube videos and it's really quite touching and charming to go back and watch some of these videos on YouTube of the Love Family days and it looks beautiful from the outside. You know, people are beautiful, happy, beautiful, happy, glowing, wearing natural fabrics and long hair and children playing and it's very idyllic.
Speaker 2:So maybe, maybe you can speak for a minute like what was the appeal? I think it was massive for a lot of people. You know, in that era of you know, tune in, turn on, no, that's why I was getting it wrong turn on, tune in, drop out. Can you kind of give us the backdrop and why it was to attract and what was actually fun and appealing about that lifestyle, before we go into the the dark side, right?
Speaker 1:well, love. At one point picked a very small handful of us to read how I got to the love family and he had everybody, almost everybody, right how I got to Family right. And then a few of us read them and we put them in categories. The thing I noticed the most from reading those was that people were young, they were looking for some way to work together and live together. They were looking for some kind of spiritual life. They were on a spiritual journey.
Speaker 1:It was over and over and you'd say you would read I was wandering and over and you'd say you would read I was wondering and looking for my family. I would go to a concert. I met a guy that looked like jesus christ and he said, hey, come on home. And or a woman. You know I was traveling. Uh, my, I didn't feel attached to materialism and my family. I was on a spiritual quest and I ran into a woman and a laundromat who said, oh, you can come home, live with us. And so a lot of people were on some kind of spiritual journey, looking for something other than materialism. And there was also a group of men that were either escaping the war or had been in the war and wanted nothing to do with Vietnam. So we also had those, and some of them became leaders strength, confidence, trust, fun, and they actually told me stories of what it was like to be in Vietnam. And so we have that contingency, too, of people that were disenchanted with the war.
Speaker 2:Can you explain the virtue names like strength, trust, confidence? Can you explain that piece?
Speaker 1:Yeah, what happened was the names had to come down in a very sacred way. Love often gave the name, but because we also believed in visions and dreams, if somebody had a dream about someone's name, they could write it down. It was put in a sealed envelope and then if somebody else a dream about someone's name, they could write it down, it was put in a sealed envelope. And then if somebody else had the same dream, or if love could witness that, the person got their name. Or the person got their name because love witnessed that's who they were and often the names really fit they.
Speaker 1:When somebody's name would come down, it was usually someone who had a distinct characteristic. Like there was a guy in the family I won't say his name because I don't want to hurt him. You know he's still kind of close to all of us he wasn't a distinct personality. We never figured out who he was right. He was kind of just there, right. But people who were like really encouraging oh that's encouragement. Or you know, really very diligent, right. Or a fresh person was fresh, or a devoted person oh that's devotion. And so a lot of times we could witness it. Now the children mostly got their names at birth and they got them from love, or if people had dreams that were witnessed by love or someone else. So the names was considered a really uh, a gift and it had a certain amount of social um clout to it, like if you had a virtue name, you were considered in a little higher in the hierarchy yeah, higher status yep yep
Speaker 2:and there's an anecdote, I, of course, I learned about this process when I, you know, was living at the love family and, strangely, guido and I, um, my full name is tamlin. I went by tamlin back then. No one ever actually asked us about taking on biblical names or virtue names, and I think maybe our names are sufficiently different if people assume they were assumed names.
Speaker 1:Remember how talented you were. You were really talented with circus arts. You remember?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah unicycle and juggling. Yeah, I was in a little circus for a brief time with uh, with one and, and heaven now jessica. But but again, so I actually I had a dream, I had a vision, um, about one of the new babies born into the love household. I forget who actually had the baby, but it was born and we were all informed of this great event. And I actually did have a dream about the baby's name and I wrote a letter to love and I was actually invited to the house to kind of hand a letter over.
Speaker 2:I didn't actually meet with love, but I wrote it down and I think the name was actually purpose is what I came with my in my dream, purpose or balance I'm actually forgetting which one it was. But then I learned, after conveying my vision, that the name was not adopted. So even at that age it was like wait, what I had? I had a vision, damn it, you know. So why was that name not chosen? So I got a bit of illusion, even at the age of 10, by that incident name not chosen.
Speaker 1:So I got a bit disillusioned, even at the age of 10, by that incident and probably I'm guessing, just knowing love the fact that your parents weren't there with virtue names, because there was kind of a uh, an inner circle of trust, right, and that bled over to how much we can trust, uh, you know anyone yeah?
Speaker 1:anyone, and also it was very unusual that a child would give a name, but it wasn't without ever happening. There was a child who had a dream about another child's name and somebody else witnessed it and that child got the name. But that was pretty rare.
Speaker 1:It was pretty rare because children were also considered in a class you know appeared, I don't know, but I imagine that that must have kind of really that was pretty unusual and pretty real. I'm surprised that, uh, the person didn't get the name because and I would only think, think that is because your parents weren't there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was on a known commodity for sure. I was still pretty new at the time. So maybe back to what was appealing. So I'm very intrigued by the two categories said either spiritual seekers disillusioned with the mainstream world, and or people who are just totally disgusted by the war by either having been in the war or avoiding the war. You kind of fleshed out those things a bit and then kind of fleshed out you know what was available in the love family lifestyle that allowed people to kind of meet those needs.
Speaker 1:And well, what we did is, every morning, we meditated, Remember that, uh, they, they count the counterculture throughout the Judeo Christian, the Christian church, that we had a lot of Jews that joined the family. It was like, oh man, we're living in Passover, we're wearing robes, we're living it's like a Jewish Christian kind of mix.
Speaker 2:Right, it seemed like pretty half and half.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was half and half along with Eastern, like meditating sitting in a full lotus chanting, right. So when people came and the first thing we did was you had to, uh, live in different houses so people would see, well you know, is this candidate somebody we want? Right. And then you had to go through bible study of old testament and a charter. We had a charter which we could get a. You have one of those charters no, I'd love to see it I should see if I can find one for you.
Speaker 1:They're kind of rare but I might be able to get a copy or something. But the charter you had to go to the charter classes and then in the meetings they'd say, yeah, this is a really nice, helpful person and they would decide what house you're going to live in. And then you got baptized. And baptism is where you picked out your Hebrew name. And so you went through the Bible and looked at all a name, strong concordance, and looked at all the Hebrew names. And which name can you live up to? And so I picked out the name Ruth, because it meant friendship. I said I can live up to friendship, right, I didn't want holy notes or anything too high. And then, um, I took care of all the kids and then love just said one day oh, you must be understanding. So that was my name, you know, because obviously I was very understanding when everybody else was like I don't want to be with the kids, please help me not be over there. And then, uh, after you got into the family, after baptism, and at baptism you had the sign of paper that everything you own belonged to the love family. Now that actually was admitted in court. When Richness left in the breakup the family tried to submit that in court that he'd willed away his last will and testament, all of his money, and we bought these houses. But he was able to get some of it back because you know the judge. He said you know I was on drugs, I got this lesion, you know I was unfairly taken advantage of but you signed away everything, okay, and that was. It was called last will and testament. You actually signed it.
Speaker 1:Then you went to live in a house and you kind of fell into like the gardening or the kids or making bread as a woman and the guys did. You know we had, uh, some small businesses. We cleaned, we did carpentry. You know there were the. It was pretty clear to find male roles and female roles, with the very few exceptions of a couple of women. Pretty much women were domestic and men were, you know, putting up the yurts and chopping the wood and, you know, make it, figuring out how to barter and make money and food and that type. You know we had different businesses that they worked in and then I think one of the glue, that and every there were a lot of young, beautiful people, you know, and it was like a really happening thing and it had some spiritual overtones meditation, you know, or and then we would have meetings where everybody took LSD and if if you were with the kids, like me, I didn't have to take LSD because I would be with the kids Right, so I can get out.
Speaker 2:You're expected like you.
Speaker 1:You almost had to take lc or you were like punished, oh yeah yeah, my twin sister joined and she didn't want to do it and that caused a real problem. They saw you as a traitor. Love even did a thing when he started realizing people were starting to get against him and rumbles. He did a thing where he made some people take lots of lsd, um to see who was, uh, you know, to see where they were really at, and um, because, uh, you know. So it was pretty common that they would have meetings and pass out different lsd and in the original time, you know, like in the 70s, that was that I think it was called windowpane and liquid sunshine, something sunshine, and it was strong stuff, man, it was strong.
Speaker 1:And then what kind of? I think what happened to us too was people started having children and they had responsibilities, right, and we had a class system where love, who lived in this area that was called love's area, right, those were the most privileged. Now, I lived in love's area because some of the kids I took care of were love kids, but I also took on a lot of other kids who, you know, they didn't want it. Well, there was a lot of abuse of children sexual and physical, and so if children wanted to stay with me. Hey, that was okay with me, I had. You know, I found a little bed for them where they'd sleep on the floor or something, and then what were the kinds of sexual and physical abuse?
Speaker 1:well, a lot of it I didn't find out until the kids grew up and talked to me right, but one of them, that was a defining moment for me because I was a little nazi love, I, you know. Whatever love said, I followed it right. And then what happened was there was a family called the Source family and they were really big in Hollywood.
Speaker 1:And they had a band and there's a movie made about Father Yod, and then Father Yod died in a hang gliding accident and he kind of had a premonition. He said if anything happens to me, I want you to go to the love family, even though he and love were kind of like you know, um, a little bit competitive, right. And so when he died, a lot of those people joined us and, uh, they brought in uh, like you could have coffee, all of a sudden and they were a different type of commune and they had a lot of secret type sexual activities and they had different types of activities. They were, we would call, more worldly than us and because I remember I was stirring granola with our cotton dresses and our hair tied back when the door opened, these beautiful women with low-cut synthetic material dresses and you came in, you know, and football, I remember Charity said we're going to watch our men, right, they're going to take our men.
Speaker 1:So what happened was they had brought some children with them and we didn't keep ages, and so one of them was sent to me and her name in the family was Hodesh, and she was sent to live with me. But she didn't seem like a child to me, or she was already in full-blown puberty, right, and she said I don't want to be over here with the kids. And so then eventually she was still staying with me and one night I found a man in her bed and I knew she was. I thought you know, maybe she's 15 or 16, right. But so I mentioned it to love and said you know, this isn't going to work. This is the kids we're at at the ranches, the kids can't, you know? She's sleeping with a guy and awkward, and so, love talking, his name was Israel and um, and then she came to me and she said hey, my mom's coming and, uh, for my birthday and I'm pregnant.
Speaker 1:And so I knew her mom. Her mom came and went and I had a friendship with her. So she said will you tell my mom I'm pregnant? I said, oh, your mom's going to be a grandmother, she's going to love you. She said, no, she isn't, I'm going to be 12. Whoa, yeah, be 12. Whoa, yeah, I changed that second. This is we are on the wrong path. We need ages. This is abuse. I, I was not at, I, I, I, it was horrible to tell her mom, right, and her mom cried and said this is all because I didn't stay with her, I left her here, you know, and then and she was horrible she had this child. He later became a lawyer, she later became a lawyer and so did the child, and the birth was a 12 year old having a baby you know, oh, it was just horrible, it was just so awful.
Speaker 1:and then the awful thing was that the man turned against her. They said she was a slut and that. And you know, he, I, they said she was a slut and that, you know I, just I said this is a nightmare. And it was kind of on the cusp of when we also broke up and her mother came and took her out of the family. But I stayed connected to her. She became an environmental lawyer and worked for Governor Brown. I think that was really intense and she lived in California. She's very private.
Speaker 2:her sister, shushan, who has another name, might be open to talking to you yeah, I know both of them actually um, and I have some history I could tell you later, but probably not on the podcast okay.
Speaker 1:So that changed me, because I'm what, this is the wrong path. I don't know what I'm going to do, but I decided I got to stand up for my values. I cannot just follow love and brotherhood. This is wrong. And so that was one case of abuse. And as kids grew up and became adults, they told me that they had been sexually abused by different people, told me that they had been sexually abused by different people. Then, after the breakup, one of the girls who I was really close to when she was 12, and she explained to me all these things you know that were happening to her by different men. I said, well, that's sexual abuse. So I took her over to her mom's and I said we need to go to the brotherhood council and have these men kicked out of the family, right? And the mom said said, oh, that's life, I don't want to hear about it. And so I had the.
Speaker 1:I had the girl write down everything that had happened. And then I had other kids. I said for two weeks I was in the school. You can come to me and if anyone's touched you anywhere, your bathing suit covers, right, um, or you see anything of where other people have exposed something that was a bathing suit cover, will you come and tell me so? And most of them were people that, as a teacher, I knew tended towards special ed kids. Okay, and so I wrote it down.
Speaker 1:And then, I don't know, like a naive person, I brought it to the Council of the Brotherhood and said this person, this person and this person needs to be kicked off. The children need to have medical exams, they need to have counseling outside the family. And they said, oh, you're a storyteller and now you're getting the children to tell stories. This isn't real, you're just on a witch hunt. So I took all the papers up to the neighboring commune, the prague tree, and they called the cops. And the cops came in and I said, yes, I do have, these are real. And then I was kicked out.
Speaker 2:That was the first time I was kicked out with oh, so you got kicked out the first time for raising waves about this issue in particular.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, we're very naturally sliding into what the heap has got wrong, which is, you know, I'm going to call this piece because this is how I reached out to you, because I'm writing a book, as you know, called the Hippies Are Right, and I want to highlight the positive and what they did get right. But of course, it was a very prominent shadow side too, and this may be the darkest shadow. So, yeah, please, please, uh, continue. Um, and let me ask you this I mean, I, I'm I'm surprised to hear, even in the state of you know, an alternate kind of social structure, that more people wouldn't have been horrified by what you're telling me in terms of sexual abuse and sexual contact with really young kids like 11, 12 year olds. That seems like pretty inappropriate in almost any, um, you know, modern society scenario.
Speaker 1:Yes, and I couldn't believe it. I remember one time love called everybody together and said is there anybody here that'll stand up for this woman and the people? I'd raised their kids? They'd helped me raise other kids, all the women. Later, if they told me, well, we didn't say anything, cause then we would have been kicked out too Nobody said anything except sensible, yeah, yes, the one woman, mother of the girl who'd been molested, did. The only thing she said is I think you need to um be less harsh with her. But he didn't listen. You know, I was kicked out, I was barred, um, taken off the property, sent off the property, and nobody stood up for me at all. Then, um, my, then my kids and I always thought I had two sons, you know, strong and magic, and they, we lived, magic, counted, and one year, I think, we lived in 72 different places and I counted them with us.
Speaker 2:We just went from couch to couch and just no money because you've been living in alternate reality for what? 10 years, at that point longer yeah, 15 15 years.
Speaker 1:um. So then my children started to show signs of deep emotional stress and I could recognize it and so I said what would help you? And they said we want to go back to the family, we don't like this world out here. You know, they've never lived in that world.
Speaker 1:And we want to be with our friends, and so I practiced in front of a mirror. My great Oscar, I could have gotten an Oscar for this. I'm so sorry I was wrong. That's not quite right. I'm really sorry I was wrong. I made a mistake. I finally got it down and I came back. I couldn't let them live there without me, right. And so then we lived another 10 years there, and immediately they started.
Speaker 2:How were you able to kind of swallow your justified sense of moral outrage and and give in? I'm assuming that kind of thing was still happening at the family.
Speaker 1:Well, the way I did it is I knew that my kids, my kids, came first I just turned 50 and if my kids wanted to get back there and they weren't doing well, and there was some suicide ideation, right and so and they were young, we're talking about, you know, fourth grader, third grader, fourth grader, right and so I knew they weren't going to manage out here, so I took them back and then I had to be their guardian, right, and so I just said I'm going to, their life is not my life, I'll guard them. And then I put the school back together and we were there for 10 years and they got to be with their dad again, they got to grow up with their friends, and then I started to slowly notice that there were kids that weren't learning how to read, including magic and then some other ones, and so I took my kids in and had them tested and they qualified for special ed. So I said I'm putting in public school. And then I was kicked out again and then we never went back because love said you know, I'd rather help them playing in the field, but his kids were in public school, it was a class system and I said you know, yeah, your kids are in public school and we're going to be your little slaves. And you know, my dad was part native american and he worked in the cotton fields and with the black people and the indians and the hispanics. I said, hey, uh-uh, we are. These kids are not going to be your little slaves. So I kept them in public school and we were barred. That was it. I never went back.
Speaker 1:But then what happened? I stayed really close by then. I was really bonded to a lot of kids and as they grew up and became adults they would confide in me, and a lot of them. There was suicide, there was a lot of mental health issues, there was a lot of depression and when I worked a little bit toward a PhD but I never I ran out of money. But I did a lot of study with the kids that hadn't were successful and the ones that were, you know know, one of them even committed suicide afterwards. But they all talked about easy access to drugs at a very young age as being the key issue with their mental issues yes, yes that they uh.
Speaker 1:Or sexual abuse With the girls. It was early sexual abuse and some drugs but, really sexual abuse, and with the boys it tended to be early access, like playing with Godzilla, plastic figures and, having taken LSD, that they got. And then they became addicted, or they had depression, psychological problems and addiction, and then a lot of them some of them are no longer here.
Speaker 2:They died. I know one who, I think, made a suicide a few years ago Sean right. Who else?
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, sean. Stephanie Purity killed herself. Sean uh died of he. He became a drug addict and then he had an accident and his body was so worn out he died more of the infection, but he was a heroin addict and so his body, um.
Speaker 1:And then Blake died of an overdose. Hope killed himself. He was an addict. He shot himself. Let's see. So Purity was a suicide, hope was a suicide. Blake was an overdose. Let's see who else. And then the mental illnesses. I don't want to say their names, but there's a whole crew of women that will never, ever be able to not stay on some pretty strong meds.
Speaker 2:Just to be clear, these are rates that are far higher than mainstream society, I'm assuming.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:There's mental issues. Obviously, our major society is also very, very sick. It's a very bad bar to compare it to, but it sounds like it's even higher among the love family kids I figured it out statistically and it was really high percentages it was like um.
Speaker 1:It was like 25%.
Speaker 2:And serious issues or suicide or overdose deaths, yeah.
Speaker 1:And then I even tried to talk to people. Like afterwards, I tried to form people to be support groups, but this was a really sad thing by and large. I couldn't get people to understand that we, as adults who formed this lifestyle, were responsible for supporting and being there for these children, who are now adults and deeply affected by our lifestyle choices. Right, and I didn't. I found that people didn't want to talk about it. They said I'm negative, don't bring it up. And then the other thing is we had and I this is a bad thing to bring up, but because I'm 83, I'm gonna bring it up we had a lot of babies that died, that were buried there, and when the property was sold they didn't declare it and I did not like that because of my native american background.
Speaker 1:You know that's a sacred where a child is buried is sacred, right and I like stillborns or like crib death or both. Both, and then one was a heart baby that died at seven, but they didn't, parents didn't get heart. It was a blue baby, right? So we had crib death and stillborns.
Speaker 1:Okay, be right, so we had crib death and stillborns, okay and so then, um, I went to the police and I drew maps of where they were all buried on the ranch and um, and then one of the kids they said I was gonna have to take a lie detector test. I said, oh, I'll take the lie detector test unless you can find somebody that will corroborate it. And some of the kids that had to help in the burial. So one of them did go to the police and say, yeah, this really happened, right. And so then the uh, the police, uh asked the people who bought the property to have me walk them around and show them where the areas were that the children were buried, so they could at least respect it. And that was a private thing between me and the head of that, the camp that bought it they exhumed the remains and reburied them elsewhere, I'm assuming what's that?
Speaker 1:no, everybody, the babies just stayed there, you know buried yeah but I'm sure that we've never made it public Cause people send in their kids. There's a baby cemetery, man, the camp, so it never came out publicly and yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, let's, let's explore this theme that came up here in terms of your being kicked out and no one's standing up for you. Um, you know, know, a classic example of what some might call brainwashing or peer pressure. Social conformance, um, banishment, whatever you want to call it. What do you want to call it? You know? That seems to be like maybe the real danger of the commune charismatic, particularly patriarchal social model, where it seems like just people become so strangely conformist after rejecting mainstream conformity and it seems like there's a common pattern where they become more conformist to the new rules and more locked into strange social structures than they were already.
Speaker 1:Yes, Just like those women who said we couldn't stand up for you because then we would be sent down the road without our kids and nowhere to live. So, yes, and it was exactly that, that you were shunned and other people even the people who left, remember loved tore their paper upright and said I'm not going to listen to you, right? And so they had all agreed they would just leave so that was about half.
Speaker 2:That was half of family. Right, that's when I left, is when that that big schism happened. That was 82 said in the 83 I think it was 83, 82, 83.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it was 83, right early 83 yeah, I think it was early 83. I've always kind of wondered exactly where it was. Um, my son was born in 84 and I was pregnant when a lot of people were leaving, and so probably 83 yeah okay, it was so.
Speaker 2:half the family left approximately right In that big schism, correct?
Speaker 1:Correct. Okay, yeah, there were more kids that Easter. We had more children than we had adults.
Speaker 2:Oh wow. So a lot of the adults left and the people that had kids stayed. It sounds like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, some people left that had kids. But some of the families that stayed, yes, were prolific with children. Correct Forgiven had a lot of kids. Ernest had a lot of kids, love had a lot of kids. You know, abishai had a couple of kids no-transcript.
Speaker 2:Feel yourself shell-shocked by the structure. Yeah, more the latter.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there was a mix, I think, fear of not having choices, and you're already old and you told your parents you know F off, right, I'm building a new world, a utopia, and so there was people who really believed it, the diehards, in fact. The people who stayed tended to be almost radical, right Extreme believers, radicals, right extreme believers. They're hanging on to the utopia, hanging on to living together at first the breakup, and but then the same thing happened. You know what I mean. You, you're hanging on to these beliefs and, uh, you're threatened. You're not. You know, especially for the women's point of view, you're not going to take a chance of you know, getting picked down the road. They, I became the poster girl for what happens if you stand up the authorities and you got picked out.
Speaker 1:A second time 10 years later yeah for putting the kids my sons in public school and refusing to take them out. I said this is their, their. No, they're not going back to no school, just playing. Be the little um servants in your field picking your raspberries, and you know that's not happening. They need an education and we weren't giving it. Our school fell apart, but originally, before 83, we had a highly structured school but a great number of the teachers left, and so then it fell to me and I'm not a teacher, I'm a great den, mother and theater lady. You know what I mean. I'm not a teacher man, even though I had a teaching degree. I I'm just a nice den lady and a you know, a nice theater person and fun person. I can tell stories but I can't teach. I didn't know how to teach math and the school never really resurrected again and the children started to show it. I mean, we had people that were like in fifth and sixth grade and couldn't read.
Speaker 2:Yeah, not good, good, no, um, in terms of physical abuse, uh, what was that? Like what? What abuse? Physical abuse as opposed to the sexual abuse.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, funny, because I just was talking to somebody yesterday and one of the abuses was actually nutritional, because we kind of had a subsistence lifestyle. We ended up with just eating oatmeal, eggs, rice, beans right homemade bread, beans right homemade bread. And the kids after the breakup, the kids that were born after the breakup, the next crop, when they were like toddlers, all of their new teeth were coming in rotten. So I had the Snohomish County come out and look at their teeth and it's like what's going on? You know, these baby teeth are rotten. And what it was is we just didn't have enough nutritional food. There was no protein, right, and we were. They were eating uh, they get a mock-up on our diet and everything they were eating bread with peanut butter and jam right, or honey and oh, starch, starch, starch and some greens, because we would grow some greens, and so there was a nutritional abuse. And then there was a nutritional abuse and then there was physical abuse in the early days.
Speaker 1:One of the reasons I formed a kid's house, as we called it, was that people would. It was horrible. They would put children in closets for hours and deprive them of food, and they would. One little Sean who had a bedwetting problem. They actually spanked him for bedwetting and then if he said I didn't wet the bed, you lied. Then he got a double spanking for lying. And so then that's another reason I formed a kid's house Because I said oh, this, you know, this can't be, this can't be. They were putting him in closets, depriving him of food, hitting him and you know not good. And I saw another kid that my woman left. I saw a woman stuff. He was crying and a woman stuffed a rag in his mouth and I pulled the rag out and it had a little blood on it and I showed it to him and said you know, you can't do this, you can't do this.
Speaker 2:Yeah crazy, this, you can't do this yeah, crazy. Um, I've got a friend, christine marie mason, who lives here near me in hawaii, who has begun her own intentional community, which is kind of the modern, more modern version of what we used to call communes, and she would certainly argue and I think this is entirely accurate that she and others like her who are beginning these new communities are trying to learn the lessons of what went wrong in the 60s, 70s and 80s and do things yet again in a new model. Um, that's why I have to. She had.
Speaker 1:I want to be honest. I don't want to hide anything. I'd rather be honest and tell all those stories, because I still believe in community, I still believe in gathering, I still believe in building something together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think most of us do nowadays. I think most people who are observing and have, you know, any awareness of all of how badly people are being left out in today's mainstream society, particularly kids, it's like a catastrophe out there.
Speaker 2:They've got to realize we need new models. But when we hear about these horror stories from the last round of attempts to have better models and it's how bad they were, how abusive they were in so many ways I think this requires us to be really careful. So I'm curious, given your wisdom and having been in this for 26 years, being the age you are now having kids yourself, being who you are.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I think connectedness is yeah exactly, yes, I think you are one of the few people who could just really give cogent advice on the new generation looking to create new models. I mean, I'm not asking you for a dissertation right now, but like, what are your guidelines if you're looking to create a new community? What do you think you have to do to avoid these pitfalls?
Speaker 1:I asked one of the kids that I thought was really intelligent about that and I said what do you think if we gathered again, what would we have to do so these things didn't happen? Me was you have to have a clear, like written down agreement of how did um, how children are to be treated and how to what to do if, uh, there's abuse physical, what is physical abuse? What is sexual abuse? Because, remember, we didn't have agents, right, and and you have to have some clear agreement and clear understanding of what's going to happen. If there is abuse of the children, right, or if of any kind, like, what is it? How did you find it? And you have to have an agreement there and we didn't have that. So that's one thing that she said I thought made total sense.
Speaker 2:And what about the uh, the patriarchy piece? And that seems to me the root of most of the problems with love family.
Speaker 2:But I'm sure there's more to it than that the what the patriarchy piece is having one man at the head of this hierarchy, and power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely Right, I think that's a pretty true statement. And so there's new models. You know sociocracy circle forward, many different models that have been put out there in recent decades to avoid this kind of thing. But it does seem like even in those kinds of models you often have more charismatic people, and better speakers rise to the fore in power structures.
Speaker 1:So I'm curious and I think sometimes when I look at, I've had people ask me like, what do you think should happen now in America? And I said, well, even though charismatic leaders can have feet of clay, they have a power to draw people together. When I was in Washington DC, when Martin Luther King came into a living room, I was in a living room with him. Okay, everything he had charisma, and love had charisma right.
Speaker 1:Moses had charisma, so they can draw people together and but the problem is men and women have feet of clay right and they're subject to greed, to sexual abusing people, and that you know over and over again, and so I don't know how. I know charismatic people draw people together, right, but the problem is, if they become a person of power, it gets imbalanced. So there has to be something. But look at Trump right, he's charismatic to a lot of people, and Obama was charismatic to a lot of people, and so charisma is a real thing, but there has to be a strength in the community beyond charisma in order for it to be sustainable and it's got to be codified in how decisions are made, right any man.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, codified is the word, that is the word, and yeah, and so that a person that might have power, right, and of drawing people together, or visionary right, a visionary right, but they can't have the ultimate power of, you know, of the money, the directions, the decisions. But the funny thing is, when Dr King was killed and then you know, a month later well, he was killed in April, and then Robert Kennedy was killed in June there was nobody left. It was kind of weird how everybody was all standing around like, oh, what do we do now? Ralph Albert, now he doesn't have it, jesse Jackson doesn't have it. It was like it was the vacuum, and so I always thought like, okay, what happened? Right, did we give these people too much power and not enough strength in the community, or what? And the same thing with love, you know, like he had all this ultimate power and then, when love died, the family pretty much sifted down.
Speaker 1:There's a contingent of people living independently on their own property in china, band, eastern washington, and they, some of them, keep their virtue names and, uh, honestly, has property she inherited, loved, did, quick, what they call quick deed, quick deed, I think, tour and yeah, and what you have now in the family is there's little like clicks here and there. The people who left. They have a lot of some social um cohesion, the different kids who were in different peer groups, like my son, magic. He has a bonded group of uh kids he grew up with Right and trying to bend has a contingency. So there's still these little pockets, but a lot of I didn't realize that this is still actually pockets of the love family around. This is more like 20, 30 people.
Speaker 1:Oh yes, absolutely, absolutely, and they have social gatherings, they have diligence just died and all of the people who left the family, a lot of them, uh b Allen, who was logic strength, they all came together for diligence at the funeral and because they're still somewhat tied together, I mean they keep in touch with each other and then so that we called them group B and they didn't call themselves group B but they were the ones who left right and they have a social cohesion. Then the kids that grew up in Magic's era. They were the ones born like 86, right Around 86, 87, 89. They're close together and they have some social cohesion. Then there's a group up in Arlington and they have social cohesion, kind of a little weaker, but somewhat. And then China Bend has a definite social cohesion. Probably the strongest cohesion is there.
Speaker 2:Very interesting and you keep in touch with all those people to some degree.
Speaker 1:To some degree, people are a little way up. I get uninvited sometimes, because I'll tell you who I'm close to. I'm close to the kids I raise, except there's a couple of them that don't like me, right. But a lot of them they call me, they thank me. I'm a chaplain. Sometimes they call for help, right, the kids that I helped raise. Many of those are very loyal to me. They buy me shoes, they make sure, you know, and my own sons, right. And then socially, um, I can show up at things like especially the, the ones who stayed behind, right, but I don't have a car and so I'm not really in the social mix because they'll have events and there's no way I can get there, so I don't even bother. But I kept my name and I still believe in, you know, a lot of the power of gathering and community, and I have positive relationships with an assortment of people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, do you have a relationship now with your daughters?
Speaker 1:Not really. My one daughter was only six months old when I joined the family, wow. And then my other daughter who founded uh, by nothing. I don't know if you ever heard of by nothing, but my daughter, rebecca that.
Speaker 1:I, she founded by nothing with her friend and she will some. She and I have a relationship, but it's not totally cozy, but it's not a strange either, but um it it is, you know, awkward, because I won't laugh and raise all the family kids, right, and some of them went back and told her um, you know, I don't know what would have happened to us. I still hear this, even every year. I hear somebody say I don't know what would happen with us if it hadn't been for you right, it sounds funny. I don't like to say that because it sounds like oh no, but I do hear that because I made a commitment and I was there for them, you know, and I did what I could to protect them and feed them and you know, be sure that they had. I like fun, you know. I see the group and storytelling, I like to get fun, but I wasn't there for my daughters, I wasn't.
Speaker 1:but I wasn't there for my daughters, I wasn't. But then Phil kind of he definitely twisted the story too, so that it looked like I was just you're the bad guy. I'm the bad guy, right but, one thing I believe.
Speaker 1:I believe you have to keep love in your heart. I only have love for him and I only have even people who did things that I thought were betrayals. I still try to find in my heart some love for them, because I think the Bible says keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it flow the issues of life. So I diligently guard my heart from hate and try to think of the best of people, even somebody that maybe betrayed me well for something that was good about that person. Try to remember a light in there yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, it's quite the arc of your life and of you know american history. Looking back on all this time, um, do you have any major regrets or do you take it for what it is?
Speaker 1:uh, I, I don't want to be somebody that says I have no regrets, because I do. I really, I really regret that I wasn't able to somehow incorporate a bonded relationship with my two daughters, and then I regret that I wasn't able to seeing and to say the kids who got addicted and had to it. It's almost like I thought it was Mary Poppins and then I actually ended up in. When I grew up, there was this Donald Duck cartoon and there was the Beagle Boys and the Beagle Boys had a mom and they were always going to jail, right. And the Beagle Boys' mom was always, ah, you're okay, right. And so I ended up thinking, well, I was married to Poppins and maybe I was more like the Beagle Boys' mom, right, because the drugs.
Speaker 1:You know know why did I not see that all those drugs that were around would have serious harm? That we couldn't. But you know, I don't know, I have regret about that, because we've had suicides and people whose lives will never, ever be productive. Yeah, I was a part of that. You know, I can't just say, oh well, somebody else, that was all love's fault. No, I was a part of that. You know, I can't just say, oh well, somebody else that was all love's fault. No, I was a part of a person that built that community. So that's why I try to be there for the kids if they're in the mental hospital or jail or whatever to some degree, and I still send money. I don't have a lot of money, but I send money to some kids right now that are homeless, that have mental illness problems, money to some kids right now that are homeless that have mental illness problems, or, you know, because I I guess you would call it at least the past, you know, turn from your ways and do something.
Speaker 1:So, yes, yeah, I, I'm not more protected and that, more protected and that, and I don't regret what anybody treated me. I was an adult, but I regret what happened and my part in any way that Definitely had negative effects on children who are mentally ill, addicted or killed themselves who are mentally ill, addicted or killed themselves.
Speaker 2:Yeah, far too many in that category. Yeah, those categories in general and in broader society. I mean I don't want to make it seem like this is just a commune or love family thing. I mean these things are epidemic in broader society, Maybe not quite as bad as the love family was still really bad and getting worse and worse. I mean I think the you know, the smartphone and social media and now ai are basically you know. We're looking at a lost generation of kids. In my view, we are.
Speaker 1:It's very scary. I don't know where we're going. You know it's it really is and that's why I don't want to. I, I don't know where we're going. You know it really is and that's why I don't want to. I don't mind, being honest, I don't even mind if people go what dumb lady or well you know, or just despise me. Just learn. Learn, because there still is hope for community. There's hope for people who love. There's a lot of loving people out here. There's a lot of people who are good and that want the best, and there's still hope. There's still hope and I believe in community.
Speaker 1:I've been very active in Native American tribes. I've lived on five tribes and the tribes have lots of problems with alcohol and suicide and drugs right, but the tribe takes action, they acknowledge it. They have treatment centers, the number one thing. They acknowledge it, and every tribe I've lived at there are elders that acknowledge it and they do something right and so, like the canoe journey, for instance, out here is a really, really helpful thing that is helping a lot of young people and older people too. And the smokehouse, which is uh, kind of going back to their traditional way of spiritual right, of spiritual right, is it Puget Sound area?
Speaker 2:yes which tribes?
Speaker 1:Muckleshoot and Tooele. Okay so, and then I was a storyteller for decades for the tribe and anyway. So that's. I guess what I want to do is be honest, tell the story, don't be afraid, and hope that people still have some hope in gathering and building community, and learn learn from what we did wrong yeah, learn from next time.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's probably a good can do it right next time.
Speaker 1:Yes, or at least less wrong.
Speaker 2:How's that? That's probably good aspiration.
Speaker 1:Do it less wrong, that's right, because if you go yes, less wrong. I like that less well.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much understanding. This has been really, really excellent and um. I will definitely follow up with you on some other questions. I think that's all I have time for today.
Speaker 1:And I really appreciate your time. Yes, and I'm so glad we met. Yeah, isn't that funny. Yeah, I love that picture?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I will include that picture in the podcast notes. Yeah, you know what?
Speaker 1:that day was. That was the day that I taught you guys how to kill chickens, because I was raised on a farm.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't remember that photo. I've seen the photo many times over the years. I don't remember the day it was taken, what we were doing, but yeah, you were there, so I'll take your word for it.
Speaker 1:All right, bye-bye, god bless.
Speaker 2:Thanks for understanding. Bye, you too.