Quote of the Day

I am a combative, inquisitive, argumentative person, and I will never allow anyone to change that.  I still have anger, but I'm okay with that because it fuels me to continue to right any wrongs I may see.  And it's because of that and the support of my true friends and family that I was able to fight my way out of Scientology and see the world for the first time.  Without judgement or pressure not to think the way I do or to have a different faith.  Our lives have begun.  Lessons are being learned, and we are healing.  It's never too late to begin again.  Better, stronger, more evolved.

-- Leah Remini with Rebecca Paley, Troublemaker, p. 228

Quote of the Day

For most of my childhood and adult life, I thought I had the answers and most of the world was just lost.  As I've grown, I've learned that I know almost nothing.  And so, in that I feel reborn in a sense.  I am reading, I go to therapy, I do things that bring me joy, learning to love the one person I didn't like very much -- myself.

-- Leah Remini with Rebecca Paley, Troublemaker, p. 228

Quote of the Day

In the end, change is never easy.  Living with a core set of beliefs that completely unravel is unsettling, to say the least.  We all have to decide, do we want to live in regret, suffer pain, and demonize ourselves for believing in and carrying out the tenets of the church, or do we want to look at what we gained?  The "bad" had to happen.  If it didn't, we would still be walking around with blinders on, not seeing the world at large.  We wouldn't have been given the gift to explore new ideas, new ways of being, thinking, open to the possibilities that there are other beliefs, different paths that can bring us closer to others.  We would not be able to be more solid than ever in our belief that "what is true for you is true because you yourself have observed it to be true."  We all have a newfound strength, in that we will never again "believe" just because.

-- Leah Remini with Rebecca Paley, Troublemaker, p. 227-228

Quote of the Day

Belief and faith are great, but very few people have been led astray by thinking for themselves.

-- Leah Remini with Rebecca Paley, Troublemaker, p. 227

Quote of the Day

I am now comfortable with the idea that even [though] I could find things the church offered me that feel "right," that didn't mean my leaving it was wrong.  And although I thought the problem with the church was David Miscavige and Tom Cruise, now I realize that if both of them left the church tomorrow I wouldn't necessarily feel differently about Scientology.  To me, it's a structural flaw of the faith that its adherents are forbidden from challenging the leader (and its policies) at all costs.  And right behind the current leader is another of the same kind.

-- Leah Remini with Rebecca Paley, Troublemaker, p. 226-227

Quote of the Day

So while it's been a little more than two years now since I left the organization, for the first time it's like I'm living a real and authentic life -- everything from sitting and enjoying a glass of wine with non-Scientologist girlfriends without secretly judging them as they speak about their lives and thinking Scientology could help them with that, to worrying that I am wasting my time finding enjoyment in my child or family when I should be on course or in session instead.  I put so much time, energy, and resources into the church that it left little room for anything else.

-- Leah Remini with Rebecca Paley, Troublemaker, p. 225

Bookin' It in 2015

I read the following 19 books in 2015. The titles in bold were particularly influential, inspiring or intriguing.

1. Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls by David Sedaris
2. Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur by Derek Sivers
3. Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More by Janet Mock
4. The Zimzum of Love: A New Way of Understanding Marriage by Rob and Kristen Bell
5. A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Jonestown by Julia Scheeres
6. The L Word: Welcome to Our Planet by Kera Bolonik
7. Yes Please by Amy Poehler
8. Not My Father's Son by Alan Cumming
9. Butch Geography by Stacey Waite
10. Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man's Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut by Rob Sheffield
11. Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain by Charles R. Cross
12. In My Skin: My Life On and Off the Basketball Court by Brittney Griner with Sue Hovey 
13. The Out List: Portraits by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders and Interviews by Sam McConnell
14. The Reappearing Act: Coming Out as Gay on a College Basketball Team Led by Born-Again Christians by Kate Fagan
15. Alice + Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis by Alexis Coe
16. The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Hurtful Parenting by Alice Miller
17. My Exodus: From Fear to Grace by Alan Chambers with Leslie Chambers
18. Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl: A Memoir by Carrie Brownstein
19. Troublemaker:Surviving Hollywood and Scientology by Leah Remini

Quote of the Day

Now that I had left the church, Jason was trying to show me what he had already experienced.  His comment about it being like Christmas reminded me of the movie The Nightmare Before Christmas, where everyone lives in Halloween Town, and all they know from is a world related to Halloween.  One day the main character Jack Skellington wanders into the forest and finds seven holiday doors and opens a portal to Christmas Town.  Here, for the first time, he finds that there is a world outside of Halloween.  He begins to question all he sees when he continually asks "What's this?"  It was the same thing for me and I imagine for anyone else who has left a cult-like community.  Worlds open up to you that you were previously cut off from.  I now realize that there are plenty of people in the universe doing good things.  Not just Scientologists, as I was falsely led to believe.

-- Leah Remini with Rebecca Paley, Troublemaker, p. 223

Quote of the Day

After thinking a certain way, and being told what to think based on strict policy for more than thirty years, learning to think for myself and make my own choices did not come easily, nor did it happen overnight.  Now, more than two years after cutting ties with the church, I'm still trying to figure things out.  This mindset, which had been drilled into me for decades, is not an easy thing to "unlearn."  With practically every decision I made when I first left (and still even now), I had to ask myself Is that what you really think, or what a Scientologist would think?

-- Leah Remini with Rebecca Paley, Troublemaker, p. 221-222

Quote of the Day

Even now, after decades in this business, I still have moments where I am trying to fit in as an actress in Hollywood, as if I were somehow an imposter.  For so long, I looked for acceptance from everyone from my dad to the people in this town.  What I have slowly come to realize, and often still have to remind myself of, is this: There is no "right" way to be.  I am flawed and imperfect, but am uniquely me.  I don't fit in and probably never will.  And I don't have to try to anymore.  That other person was a lie.  And let's face it, normal is boring.  We all have something to offer the world in some way, but by not being our authentic selves, we are robbing the world of something different, something special.

-- Leah Remini with Rebecca Paley, Troublemaker, p. 170

Quote of the Day

I understood that Scientology was about following the precepts, laid down in the policy by the leader, L. Ron Hubbard.  If you did that, your life would be good.  But if you committed overts, or transgressions, and didn't talk about them, didn't take Scientology courses and auditing, then you would receive something bad back from the universe.  And the only way to really do things right for yourself, and the universe, was to stay connected to the church.

-- Leah Remini with Rebecca Paley, Troublemaker, p. 16

Quote of the Day

Ironically, for me and for most other people who have left the church and spoken out against it, the very qualities that we've been penalized for -- defying, questioning, thinking independently -- are the same qualities that made us prime candidates for Scientology in the first place.

-- Leah Remini with Rebecca Paley, Troublemaker, p. xiv

Quote of the Day

I was taken with the idea that a deep, systematic, and straightforward wisdom on how to live the best life for myself (and the planet) could be presented before me in a direct, tangible, and comprehensive way.

-- Leah Remini with Rebecca Paley, Troublemaker, p. xi