Culture Capture and the Family: Nuclear and Cellular
On Recovery And Religion
First, a note to remain current with my dear readers. Out of an abundance of practicality I am writing a non-fiction book. I want to collect, in one place, all of the principles I regularly teach single women. It’s fun to be captured by a project and not the culture, and to retrace past wipeouts into emotional valleys, in the hopes they become shallow potholes for the courageous gals who seek my guidance. I spent a lot of time lost and captured, which I accept as the plan for my life. Now I revel in visible relief when I vocalize past challenges to clients.
My manuscript is longer than I wanted for an “open to any page” kind of memoir handbook and daily reader. That brings me to shrinking it by exploring a section in this essay. I am utterly fascinated by the two paths I have seen emerging as we all fight our way out of our current mess.**
Now onto the two paths I see.
One is religious. One is recovery.
In my present journey through all the bad writing it takes to collect enough good writing to form a book, I need downtime. Yesterday in seeking some brain rest I stumbled upon a true crime documentary about a son’s tragic loss of his mother. (as we do, to unwind) I discovered a missing piece on the topic of these two paths, provided by a mention of the narrator’s grandfather in the documentary. Ahoy! I was back. I will now confidently remove this section from my too-long book and explore it here on Substack. You may recognize the topic as it was a seed in an old essay from my Memoir Handbook. If you are like me and impatiently bounce if you begin to scan something you may have already read, please bear with me. The topic seems to have bloomed. First, let’s examine the family and how different types give way to religion or recovery.
The Family: Nuclear and Cellular
According to Jungian thought there are two types of families: nuclear and cellular. There is nothing wrong with either family type. Both have issues and benefits. Just as we accept opposite inner feminine/masculine energies in a person, we can see cellular and nuclear as the family’s inner energies.
Nuclear is derived from the latin word nucleus, a form of the original word, nux. Nux literally means ‘a nut’, but was also figuratively used to signify ‘the core of something’. In the case of this example, nuclear doesn’t just refer to an original family but also how an extended family functions.
A nuclear family centers around the oldest living matriarch and patriarch. Group communication is consistent. Codependency is permitted and possibly encouraged, and unity and loyalty toward bonds of affection come before all else. Compromise on individual needs is frequent. Members are encouraged to get over their petty conflicts in order to join and fewer stand out from the whole. This type of family is old-world and usually produces at least two generations living under the same roof, on the same property, or nearby. Nuclear families are just, together. Regardless of what’s going on. Observance of religious holidays and attendance at religious institutions and family parties often feature in nuclear families. Join, have something to eat, lean in or not. Your reasons for not wanting to join are not as interesting as your presence at the event, which is not investigated by others even if it is uncomfortable for you. It’s pretty black and white. There is not a lot of grey.
Cellular families are different, and modern times have encouraged their dominance. Individual will, thought and action is encouraged. The oldest matriarch and patriarch nucleus either unconsciously or deliberately encourage the immediate generation to spread their wings. What follows is a less traditional, liberal standard for family bonds of affection. Smaller groups of the family break off for functions. Communication and camaraderie in large groups where everyone honors unspoken mandatory attendance is not demanded. Family functions may be spontaneous, they may not include everyone, and whoever isn’t there is encouraged to rise above personal offense. Often times high achievers who have been liberated to prioritize self become materially successful and set the tone. They sometimes provide an improved material standard for the rest of the family, becoming a new version of the “nux” or nucleus. They may pop for a luxurious family trip the matriarch and patriarch could not have afforded. The family may all get together at a function, but it is a rare and treasured event, possibly not even on a holiday. Spiritual growth takes precedence over religious commitment. Cellular families encourage therapy and openly talk about personal growth more than in a nuclear family, where members are more likely to be told to get over it and on with it.
Many families are hybrids of these two, but you can probably decipher which qualities are fixed in your family to realize the dominant type of experience for you.
Cellular Family Pitfalls: Culture Capture, the Emasculation of Men
Culture Capture is a term I have been using in my work as a coach serving women in the area of love and relationships. It is my attempt at an “umbrella” label for the deeper reasons a woman prioritizes clanging, urgent public or professional gain and visibility over quiet, steadfast personal fulfillment. I think of culture capture as a place where unhealed wounds in the psyche are fulfilled by movements in the culture.
Cellular families have emerged and become more prominent since the end of the innocence in 1959, before JFK was elected. JFK, according to my walking encyclopedia of a father, (God rest his soul) “got in by an eyelash”. People were not confidently welcoming that change nor were they heavily involved in cultural shifts or politics at the time. The seeds of the Vietnam War were being sown, and if I may butcher CS Lewis, no one realizes the importance of events in the present; that happens later. Political involvement and massive cultural change were in the works but as yet, unseen. I often think my song 1959, written after a treasured conversation with my father about war and the women’s movement, was a doorway into my work with women today. You can hear 1959 playing as I share more on that topic HERE.
Let’s barrel ahead. MTV started raising teenagers and the 90s turned into the new millennium. Cellular families may have been relatively manageable if they had evolved at a slow and natural pace through several more generations, but the concept was hijacked, causing massive acceleration. It has resulted in what we see today; brittle shreds of family bonds, and space for the state to enter and do irreversible medical harm in the name of “affirming” support.
Cellular families fortified a self esteem and recovery movement with corresponding language which has now entered the political sphere. Cultural Marxists in the public sound very twelve steppey, don’t you think? Words are powerful enough to be a weapon or cause a cancer of “normalizing” the utterly insane in the name of “inclusivity”. A concept like acceptance, made famous by recovery movements, is now utterly corrupt and forcing acceptance of the unacceptable. Cellular families were extremely advantageous for ushering in the now-obvious harmful shams we see in public schools and on “blue” City Councils.
The state wants your cellular family even more divided, so they can effortlessly enter. Examples of a sham becoming harm: making it legal for a 12 year old to give consent for a radical medical intervention. Parents being “trained” through emotional dictatorship and fear of loss to focus on the child’s pronoun instead of that child’s entire life. “Abortion” in California meaning giving birth and allowing the child to die on a table somewhere in the hospital if the mother decides she just doesn’t want it after all. That is how disgusting and gruesome sham agenda has become. That is why the “evolution” of the “modern” cellular family became the quest for nefarious, immoral, destructive causes.
Liberal single women from cellular families live out the feminist dream with the state as a replacement for wise aging patriarch and supportive, cherishing spouse. People are now accepted for inclination to cry out for a government program where there is spiritual need. Children hypnotically recant slogans about inclusion that they heard from the electronic babysitter, which is the closest screen. Next up is the nuclear family as endangered species for the government to poach, infiltrate, and capture, via the emasculation of men in cellular family culture. (yeah, try it. Especially in the south. I’ll hide and watch.)
Disrespect of men is an epidemic of cellular family capture and it is destroying women and the family. Personal misery without a man is boasted about if it signals professional “progress”. Legitimate mental and spiritual need is cast aside and often answered with a prescription or a campaign to “normalize” excruciatingly painful dysfunction. This has led to an absolute disintegration of women feeling loved, healthy masculine leadership, common sense, and soulful, steadfast safety in relationships and community.
The emasculation of men is encouraged and is often framed as a fashionable and empowering trend. Women boast the leadership position on social media bios marked “CEO of my home” and allow their teen sons to call them “bruh”, another silent killer of virtuous womanhood. Women humorously disrespect their husband in their sons’ presence. (I am aware that everyone jokes, including myself, but I will proudly boast that my sons have demonstrated discernment between what is edgy and humorous for my husband and I, and the blatant disrespect that will not ever become ordinary in our home.) Single men must be terrified, and good men are becoming visibly afraid of their humorless wives. This is seen not only as ordinary, but as “progress”. I see men in my hood walk around as though they are ashamed to produce testosterone, and their wives seem proud to see it. There is very little joi de vive in this. No healthy flirtation, no robust appreciation for feminine energy, yin and yang, contrast, the birds and the bees, and the truth of life. It’s a dystopian contest among neutral, politically correct emotional orphans. Enhanced by City Councils credited as leaders saving us from, oh say, a climate “crisis”. These Councils blatantly ignore not only veterans but boring-old married, committed, religious, nuclear-family taxpaying citizens, who know that We the People lead and public servants on Councils serve.
Nuclear Family Pitfalls: Rigidity, Fundamentalism, and Bypassing Spiritual Growth
Nuclear families stay together and take care of each other. Generational wealth and conservative values feature more than edgy plans and day care for children. Care homes for the elderly are seen in the same light as government to nuclear patriarchs: an intrusion. Toddlers and elders see each other regularly as the nuclear homestead often contains more than one generation. This can lead to legalistic rigidity in religion, intolerance of legitimate personal discovery, and mistrust of robust variation in personal fulfillment. That produces rebellion. Where cellular families made way for a self esteem movement that included 12 step recovery and psychoanalysis, nuclear families continued to rely on religion. This has its pitfalls. Even after 2020, many literal Biblical scholars remain focused on false teachers and clarifying Scriptural interpretation without placing it in the context of medical tyranny and disastrous urban decline. Theologically bypassing reality leads people to bypassing it personally, and makes way for another form of capture. Granular focus through a historical lens, without remaining relevant, undeniably captured entire congregations and pastors who did not integrate Scriptural knowledge into present day. Church online was rendered useless to Christian women who were standing on verses before Councils to protect their teenage sons from a shot that caused myocarditis. Many good God fearing religious people are now without a church community for refusing to stand in line at a vaccination tent on their church property.
In addition, focus on other instead of self runs rampant in the mission-minded religious, when the point is to keep your eyes on God. It is often acceptable to sit down to a women’s breakfast at church and hear only about all those who have drifted from religious life instead of personal experience of God. This is an indication that the recovery from focus on others provided in the use of the 12 Steps could be a process worth testing against Scripture.
Just as those drowning in a selfish version of the 12 step movement could use the service-over-self model that many religions teach, nuclear family types who are judging others and scanning for false prophets could stand to consider whether they are bypassing the crucial emotional growth that recovery movements provide.
Religious outlooks fortify the awakened patriot movement and may usher in a revival of nuclear family life, which will assist in restoring the nation. Pals of mine, a female same sex couple with children, who left Hollywood to protect their two kids from LAUSD, are beginning to look like midwestern farmers from the 60s to me. Masculine will in one is learning to farm and grow and feminine surrender in the other is canning and studying scripture by candlelight with her kids. They are embracing traditional, nuclear values despite being in the two female bodies in which God happened to place them. They fortify a marriage born of the religious rebellion and political activism they now reject. A mind bender, I know, but as they say in 12 Step, principles, not personalities.
I constantly think about these two paths. Sometimes I drop all 12 Step thought and shudder. Then I occasionally lose my place with unappealing behaviors and dig out 12 Step daily readers. Religious guidance doesn’t always help without the perspective that personal growth movements provide, especially for those who grew up with the confusion of chemical dependence. On the other hand, breathing, reading Matthew and asking Jesus for help sometimes accomplishes in one mysterious instant what took days for me in Alanon.
My Own Break From 12 Step
That grandfather in the documentary I mentioned while opening this essay was Richard “Sandy” Beach. Sober in AA for almost 50 years, I immediately recognized the sound of his voice when a recording of him was played. My memory leapt and grabbed me. I hit the pause button to absorb it, and reflect. It felt like a little writer miracle and sent me into a deep dive of more research on my Ipad last night while my husband quietly snoozed beside me.
While I was in Alanon years ago, I took the direction of a fellow who suggested I compassionately listen to speakers share on their alcoholism. Sandy B. was all over the internet and was one of my favorites. However, some things made me flinch about Sandy’s “pitch”, as they say in AA. (a pitch is like a testimony in religious Christian life.) Sandy B. boasted that he had the same sponsor for 42 years, but his longest marriage (among the four of them) lasted 17 years. His family likely took the trip from nuclear to cellular after that first divorce. While I know he helped thousands of people all over the world, he may or may not have been there for his. I sense that he left generations behind to suffer a paternal wound, as evidenced by the documentary itself. I also distinctly remember him saying that he had looked up at the crucifix in church and said “if that’s what God does to his kid, I gotta find a different Higher Power”. That really bothered me at the time and still does. Did his resistance persist? And in which direction did he go looking for his? Remember, a power that is “greater than yourself” can reside down below just as easily as up above. My top research topics for the last decade have been mind control, generational satanic abuse, the dark side of the military, and on occasion, whether the 12 Step Movement is indeed a cult. I researched those topics for a novel, beginning in 2016, which turned out to simply serve as a God-led personal guide instead of fiction entertainment. All of those topics have common threads and characters. Sandy B’s life touches several of those areas.
Personally, I needed a de-programming recovery from “The Program” in 2020. The break from it was granted to me when someone who had closely tracked my spiritual progress for years boasted her training as a Johns Hopkins “contact tracer”. I still remember how my stomach felt like a shelf that dropped to my feet when I found out. Our relationship was already strained for me refusing the phony Covid hysteria.
Indeed, rejection is protection. As I questioned everything beginning in 2020, I finally admitted that I had been feeling apprehensive about Alanon in Los Angeles since about 2016, when I began that novel. It was one of the reasons I started writing it.
Is A Harmonious Hybrid Possible?
Is there a SOULution? A possibility that we can blend? Create a hybrid movement out of restoring the true history of 12 Step?
Dr. Jung, Bill W. and Dr. Bob are known as the founders of the 12 Step Movement through the creation of AA. But where did Bill W. find his 12 Steps after a miracle in his hospital room, where he felt the presence of God? Bill’s desire to drink departed with God that day. God replaced the desire with a necessary “spiritual experience” in Bill W. This is still discussed in meetings today. Bill took the 6 principles of the Oxford Movement and created the 12 Steps. The Oxford Movement, or Group, was created by Frank Buchman and got its name from South Africans who knew some in the group were from Oxford University. Someone saying “those guys from Oxford are here” christened them, as the story goes. The Oxford Movement’s purpose was breaking from traditional services and sermons, off into small groups to discuss Christ within the context of spiritual experience. (On the Tail of A Comet is the book for more information) Eventually the purpose was to leave out the church, and simply trust Christ. This is not unlike a Christian mother today who refused a jab for her family, left her church, and now opens her Bible with a video of a woman preaching the Gospel, not religion.
The OG Serenity Prayer
Do you know that the life purpose of the full Serenity Prayer’s writer, Reinhold Niebuhr, was to confront Communism? Do you know the original prayer, without the watering down and removal of reference to Jesus Christ? Here it is.
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship as a pathway to peace. Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it.
Trusting that He will make all things right, if I surrender to His will. That I may be reasonably happy in this world, and supremely happy with Him, forever in the next.
In a moment when the culture has devoured and destroyed cellular families, possibly through the strategic use of recovery movements, and is coming for the nuclear ones, might acknowledging the unscrubbed history of the recovery movement be necessary?
Rooms in Los Angeles could certainly use the awareness. The reason I stopped listening to Alanon speakers in 2020 is because remaining current with present day meetings online meant hearing discussions that I received as distraction over spiritual growth. Suddenly it was about about race and religion and pronouns and a bunch of other things I consider “outside issues”. My decade and a half in Alanon was about feelings and shared human experience, not divide. It meant the Mormon business owner called the Jewish homemaker and all they knew were the details of the daily struggle, the first name, and an initial for the last.
I built my relationship with God during Alanon but when 2020 rolled around it was getting even more real. I began to acknowledge how much I had flinched at Sandy B.’s assessment of what God “did to His” only Son. I had read enough of the Old Testament to see that God really tried to help his people get it, and they kept not getting it. The Bible and recovery both teach that the extreme demonstration required to grow spiritually is often obvious, disastrous, painful and unjust. That is how I see the victory on the cross, no different than a “bottom” in recovery, just far, far more important.
Finding my way through a life that will continue to get me rejected for being too “out there” for church circles and too religious for the meditating yogis is fine with me. It’s simple. I read Scripture and pray to Jesus. If I talk about it too much or concern myself with whether you do too, or what you think of me, I lose my way. My Catholic ancestors would admonish my sincerity and access to Jesus Christ, closer than my hands and feet, at times in child’s pose on the bathroom tile, instead of a confessional booth. On the other hand, religious get prickly with me for incorporating Jungian thought or accepting a perspective like “the Quantum Field could be seen as the Holy Spirit”. I accept this and remain teachable. I am simply looking to live in the solution for today, and I found mine, and been effective in helping others with their process. I am accountable enough to God to admit that even my rebellion and rejection was more honest than phony devotion would’ve been. That even in my lowest most disconnected moments I was still praying to God. I have repented for what was unacceptable and I receive forgiveness. I learned how to do this from spiritual mentors, pastors and leaders, religious and not. I learned how to stand in confidence about it from Alanon.
The “I don’t do God” situation in 12 Step, allowing for Atheists to “use the group” as a “power greater” is effective, but a double edged sword. I understand the relief, I experienced a great deal of it, from what seemed like a dogma-proof process for healing, after having a parent wag his finger in my face about going to church. However, who is really in the group? A game of telephone in meetings among the uninvestigated character of attendees, some of whom are court appointed criminals, rejecting God (which can also be seen as rejecting evil) is a risk, and has proven to be one. Daily devotionals that unpack Scripture have provided for a vast landscape personally, where there was once just a clearing from “conference approved literature”. The paradox that emerges from that is having opened my mind to devotionals because of healing in Alanon.
If the shortened, diluted version of the original serenity prayer is witnessed and rejected, and culture capture’s disguises are revealed and dismissed, 12 Step programs may see a viable path back to their roots. I want to note here, however my experience with recovery is through Alanon, and when it comes to using the 12 step program to stop drinking or using, it is a very different situation which I cannot confidently speak about. If you need AA to stay sober, using AA is the priority over this analysis.
12 Step, may be, after all, just another Christian movement that got captured.
I am currently enrolled in a Prayer Bootcamp with a church I love because the Pastor stands up to tyranny. I understand Paul’s letters to the Corinthians like I never have before, because I pretty much live in a modern day Corinth. Present day context has provided me the opportunity to trust in God and understand scripture. Humility has allowed me to admit that even as I lived through years of mocking Christians, even onstage at Second City, the truth is I was wrong. I am endlessly fascinated with the Bible, and it doesn’t ever get old. I trust the process of understanding it, which included writing songs about God from a perspective of both rebellion and reverence. I gathered the self esteem to synthesize rebellion and reverence from Alanon recovery. I am as devoted now as I once was irreverent then. I have forgiven those who shoved religion in my face from their own fears, which set me on a path of loss. I cherish those who let me have my own trip towards God.
Discernment in 12 Step recovery is imperative. But if you know who you are and whose you are, a 12 step group can be one of two things: effective at promoting balance and legitimate personal progress, or just totally unnecessary.
A 10,000 foot view of the pitfalls and virtues of both cellular and nuclear families, and the freedom to seek accountability to God “as you understand God” through recovery, or through religion, is required for a balanced mindset during these intense times.
I want to hear from you in the comments if this resonates or causes you to see a bridge between recovery and religion.
**If anyone reading actually still subscribes and entertains an echo of ‘what mess?’ I mean the kind of mess that causes a ball club to seek an A on a distorted societal report card by inviting underground perversion to a family baseball game. (Please see this piece for someone who brilliantly unpacked it.)