pbs documentary on 'people's temple', im traumatized - Page 2

[contactmaya]

Im reassured that a pregnant woman escaped, that a woman and her 3 year old escaped. If even one child got away, that gives me solace.

[StoriesInTheSoil]

The show you saw on PBS was a feature film documentary called "Jonestown: The Life and Death of People's Temple" and it showed at our local independent theatre a couple of years ago. I saw it when it was there and then caught the tail end of it on PBS when you all did. I find it all profoundly disturbing. I am obsessed with radical religion and cults right now and while it is so horrifying, I feel like I must try to understand it. It is so horrible though. I know that the first time I saw this film, I cried openly. That was when I had no children and thought that I was lightyears from "family life." This time I watched them talking about injecting cyanide into infant's mouths while I held my infant, sleeping, in my arms, and was too numb to cry. What a terrible, terrible moment in history this massacre was.

[zoebird]

yes, i feel similarly.

i am also haunted by it. there were those who apparently wanted to leave, and a woman says 'don't take my children! don't take my babies!' before the end of it. i suppose those babies died.

it was all so tragic to me, so difficult for me to watch. i couldn't believe how intense it all was, how fast it went down. only three walked away through the jungle. the other 80 odd lived because they happened to be somewhere else at the time. absolutely tragic.

what is sad, too, is that if it had been healthy, it would have been a beautiful thing. the idea of vibrant, healthy, spiritual communal living is something that so many of us long for, hope for, wish for. sadly, they missed the mark because of the leader, but the people actually created something quite lovely, quite real.

and then the end.

i don't know how one doesn't just step out of it, step away. timothy--who lost a 9 mo old son and his wife, who was interviewed for the show--he said that his mind was saying 'this is too much, this is too fast, tihs needs to stop.' and yet he couldn't stop his wife from injecting the poison into the baby, then taking it herself and dying. he was one of the three who walked into the jungle and managed to live.

such grief, such terrible grief.

thomas cahill, an amazing nonfiction essayist, has an article about this. his essay is in one of his books--i believe A wolverine is biting my leg. just chilling when i read it. seeing this documentary. . .i couldn't stop watching, but it was heartbreaking beyond measure.