A cult took away my birthday. This woman got it back.

Published: Oct. 31, 2020, 5 p.m.

This story originally aired on June 22, 2019. I was born into the Love Family, a culty commune that existed in Seattle in the 1970s and '80s. The family had a leader, a patriarch named Love, and 300 to 400 brothers and sisters. Their first names represented the virtues that Love saw in them — Purity, Solidity, Imagination, Devotion — and their last names were all Israel. I call it a culty commune because "commune" explains why people joined it, and everything positive they left with. "Cult"