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This painful episode depicts the moments of sexual awakening.  First with Kenny,  my summer crush who loved me,  but then taking a sharp turn to the unsettling encounter with Robert Scheinman the most popular boy in the senior class.

Imagine a house party that veered off-course spiraling into chaos, an event that would leave my mother in a rage if found out. And the disappointment in realizing that for Robert it was only about sex.  

The intensity escalates with a chilling story that shifts to a .gripping account of a night that took an unwelcome turn, morphing from casual fun to an unwarranted assault. This narration bears the burden of exploitation and understanding consent and the scars left when ignored. This peeled-back narrative is marked by betrayal, that is as raw as it is real. By sharing these deeply personal stories, I hope to preserve a piece of history from the 1960s that emphasizes the enduring importance of finding the strength to speak out which I did not possess at the time.  And in breaking this silence about sexual assault the hope is that the response is one of empathy, respect, and compassion

The complete documentary Through a BlueWindow  can be seen  on my youtube channel shellfein1. I would love to hear your thoughts.
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                 Liz, who was new to the group, was my new roommate.  Ours was her first group apartment and Aggie who could be a bully under the best of circumstances, had no sympathy for Liz when she spoke nostalgically about her life before the Sullivanians, holding her wedding album close,  she'd often reminisce during house meetings.
          
                 “I’m tired of hearing you moon over your family. You’re not married anymore, and your family treated you like shit when you left your husband. Forget them already.”
       
                 And then Aggie uttered the phrase I’d become all too familiar with during my short time with the Sullivanians. It was what Jackson had said to me and what I had said to Monica, It was a phrase that begins a sentence but stops all further discussion in its tracks. 

                     “My therapist said it was okay."

                   And then she continued,   "My therapist said it was okay for me to tell Liz to stop or else."

          Twenty--four hours later  Liz had disappeared, vanished, and with her Aggie's prescription of Valium. After a frenzied night trying to locate Liz.  hoping the worst hadn't happened, we finally learned the truth and how Aggie's toxic behavior had been the catalyst that had pushed Liz to the edge. 

     

The complete documentary Through a BlueWindow  can be seen  on my youtube channel shellfein1. I would love to hear your thoughts.
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The History Tapes.  The oral telling jumps to the early 1960s   and with it more ammunition for the therapists to manipulate.  A sixth-grade party goes horribly wrong taking with it my self-esteem as I enter Junior High School without friends.  

Wanting a more grown-up look for junior high school, Anita and I decided to cut our hair into the layered look, the au currant style of the time leaving me with dandelion fuzz every time the barometer went above fifty percent.  I wore scarves, like Audrey Hepburn, I fantasied, but wound up looking more like old Mrs. McCormick, our next-door neighbor who’d bang on the wall between our apartments when she was drunk, yelling, ‘You dirty kikes.’

With Anita gone and because of the Clifford incident,  I didn’t have a single friend when I started Kingsley Junior High School, but I’d been placed in Honor Art and that’s where I met Suzanne, only to be abandoned by her two years later when her desire to be popular became more important than our friendship and I was left behind. Eventually, I found a good friend in Rachel. We shared our first sexual experiences, which for me brought back the memory of the rape scene from Peyton Place, the movie that my mother took me to see as a ten-year-old,  the traumatic scene that profoundly shaped my ideas about sex and, bolstered by my mother's continued mixed messages about what "nice girls" do,  just adding to my confusion and misconceptions. 

You will find out about the sealed envelope handed to me by my guidance for my mother to sign but instead found its way to the bottom of the sewer, torn into tiny pieces.  

The complete documentary Through a BlueWindow  can be seen  on my youtube channel shellfein1. I would love to hear your thoughts.
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Forty years ago the Sullivanians were exposed by  NewYork Magazine and the Village Voice for their insidious practices, but as far as I know, Through A Blue Window is the only first-hand accounting, and the next episode of the podcast is about Amagansett and the group.

I'd been in the group for six months, but I had no idea what to expect as I headed out to the East End of Long Island to spend the summer cleaning summerhouses. It was Memorial Day 1974, and during the long train ride, I  finally learned the details of what had only previously been alluded to and the importance of maintaining a veil of secrecy from the locals. 

This episode is also about  Monica Cipro, the first and only relationship I had with a woman, and despite falling in love with each other that summer, a cold wind of conflicting views about the group ended what had barely begun. 

I would spend four more years in the group. You can see the complete documentary on my YouTube channel  shellfein1

The complete documentary Through a BlueWindow  can be seen  on my youtube channel shellfein1. I would love to hear your thoughts.
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 I was living in a group apartment but I wasn't officially in Sullivanian therapy. The next step in the process was to have a consultation with one of the four licensed therapists and as the day approached, my roommates were all a twitter. 

Though I had previously eschewed joining anything, from the Brownies to Gamma Gamma in high school,  I seemed to adapt, one could argue, that I blossomed amidst the Arlettians, at first.  Never mind that it meant severing all contact with my mother.  Never mind that I allowed my friendship with Rachel to disintegrate like the yellowed edges of an old book. Never mind that I was staying up late, falling asleep, stretched like sinew on a bow.

To cover all my additional group expenses I began to clean group apartments which led to a life-threatening emergency.  After my recovery, I continued to clean and met a remarkable number of men in a matter of months and soon I was having sex with virtual strangers more men than I could count on the fingers of two hands. 

Listen to the entire episode and hear more details about my early Sullivanian orientation and the expectations of group life.  

The complete documentary Through a BlueWindow  can be seen  on my youtube channel shellfein1. I would love to hear your thoughts.
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 The ‘group’ was self-monitoring by design, with the oral telling of one’s life, a history, at its core. Each history began with your earliest memory and ended on the day you entered the group and like Madame Defarge, all this information was knitted into the group’s collective conscious with every detail deemed significant.  History sessions were recorded with the trainees passing the tapes on to their supervisors and then  in turn to Seth.

Childhood trauma was the bedrock of therapy and the way in which Cora and the others in the group were controlled.  Abandonment was a constant thread throughout  Cora's life and the turmoil of one event in particular and the emotional roller coaster of unanswered questions it created. This  episode delves into the inherent power and profound influence our childhood experiences wield over our lives and  how  Cora,  "in the twilight before sleep, flies out the window, into the mystery of a sudden disappearance and asks why."

The complete documentary Through a BlueWindow  can be seen  on my youtube channel shellfein1. I would love to hear your thoughts.
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Two long years following my divorce I was financially situated to return to school without my mother's help. This episode delves into my seemingly innocent meeting and infatuation with Jackson Mory,  the graduate assistant in my color theory class at Queens College, and how he became the gateway into the notorious world of the group and the Sullivanians, years later classified as a cult.  Unbeknownst to me there was enormous pressure put on Jackson to encourage me to join the group and our 'dates' played a pivotal role in this entanglement.  

Time to continue navigating the mysterious workings of the Sullivanian Institute, this controversial lesser-known side of society that after decades still spurs debate. So brace yourselves.

The complete documentary Through a BlueWindow  can be seen  on my youtube channel shellfein1. I would love to hear your thoughts.
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 ]As this episode unfolds the eerie news bulletins of Jonestown bring with it the realization that the Sullivanians were a cult and I was part of it.  Hoping, one last time to make a go of my relationship with Chris we move to the East Village,

Still cleaning for two Sullianian apartments,  a few months later the events of near nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island nuclear plant unfolds.  Caught in the crossfire I learned of the treacherous events, marked by unprecedented actions and some shocking discoveries. These events are true. I experienced them. Thank you for listening and please pass along

The complete documentary Through a BlueWindow  can be seen  on my youtube channel shellfein1. I would love to hear your thoughts.
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New York made abortion legal in 1970 – three years before Roe v. Wade.  I needed a late-term abortion and  I was having trouble finding a doctor but then Rachel's mother found Dr. Lowenthal. He was brusque during the consultation and examination and as he explained the procedure to my mother in an emotionless monotone she became distressed.   I assured her it was  my choice but at the hospital a few days later when he rolled  himself into the waiting area in a wheelchair,  my mother couldn't hide her apprehension

This is a raw and unfiltered description of what every woman experiences when faced with the agonizing decision of abortion and the intense fear, the physical agony, and the psychological distress, that follows an abortion that is often overlooked..

The painful procedure and the risks that came with it were exacerbated by the sadistic doctor and the reproachful nursing staff and the palpable fear  at the  bone-chilling realization that the doctor was operating without anesthesia

The complete documentary Through a BlueWindow  can be seen  on my youtube channel shellfein1. I would love to hear your thoughts.
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"I am asking the apartment to ask Cora to leave. I don't have to say anymore. My therapist said I didn't have to give my reasons and that I could just ask the apartment to ask her to leave. You could either vote yes or no based on my request."

This is what Annie, my once-upon-a-time ally and friend in the group asked of our roommates, in the apartment where I had lived for three years. I  had heard this uncompromising reasoning many times in my five years in the group. To me, it was bullying. 

In the end, it was majority rule and I had a week to leave. A group apartment was forming on the 12th floor of our building and that was where I wound up. This new   apartment coming together in the middle of the winter didn't exactly include the cream of the Sullivanian crop, 
.
 A week after I moved upstairs, Stan,  my fourth and final therapist - a former history teacher - in another bizarre twist, asked me if I  wanted to move back because if I did, 'I should call the apartment and ask for a house meeting  and say that I should be allowed to move back because Annie had bullied my roommates."  This is exactly what I had said to him weeks before. To this day, I don't know what held me to the chair because at the time every impulse I had was urging me to grab Stan by his bony shoulders and shake him until he fell apart.  

Listen to this episode and hear how Stan's incompetence and  Annie's bullying helped  me recover the resilience I thought was lost.

The complete documentary Through a BlueWindow  can be seen  on my youtube channel shellfein1. I would love to hear your thoughts.
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