It's 5:30 a.m.... I've had trouble sleeping lately -- been up since 4:00.  Perhaps due to ageing combined with being immersed in a hugely complex project at my part time job.  So I had a chance to read your post slowly.

Thank you for taking me along on such an uplifting adventure!  All beautiful, poignant and positive... perfectly capturing the life stolen from me while I was in a cult.  The little things, the thoroughly enjoyable subtleties that help keep me grounded.

When we moved from Southern Connecticut where I worked in Times Square to a small town in Maine, I was enamored by those small things.  Then the novelty of it all wore off and I found myself back in a bit of a rut -- ran into enough rotten people to tarnish it.  Then my eyes opened up again with a new found genuine appreciation for so many of those small, sublte gems.  A new post cult life built in a much better place and especially with a much better frame of mind, the best of it all being my new found tribe mates!

I hope you find your new world to be like that: therapeutic, healing and satisfying... or simply without loneliness or isolation. 

PS, Although I love them both, I'm neither Elvis or Beatles -- nostalgia makes me mildly nauseous, no matter how great the music is/was.  I'm embarrassed to admit to much of what I listen to, or at least pay attention to.  Suffice it to say that it helps keep me young at heart!