(Minghui.org) My mother, great aunt, and grandmother have been practicing Falun Gong since I was little.
For a long time I remembered Falun Gong as a practice that benefited my mother, yet at the same time it struck fear into my heart. It made me fear losing my family and made me fear for my future.
Now I have learned the truth about the persecution and realize that it was the Chinese Communist Party that made me fearful by launching the persecution of Falun Gong.
One day when I was in preschool, I waited and waited for my mother to pick me up. It got very late and then my father came. He was angry and told me that my mother didn't care about me because of Falun Gong.
That day I was very confused: my gentle and kind mother was taken away by the police, who were supposed to keep us safe from criminals.
My mother was not around when I was in elementary school. The school tried to turn us against Falun Gong. I was skeptical, but gradually became a little convinced.
After my mother returned home, she told me about Falun Gong and the truth of the persecution. It awakened a memory from when I was five years old. I was at my grandmother's home watching my family study the Falun Gong teachings together and doing the exercises. I had felt a real sense of joy and happiness.
My great aunt remembered that I told them I saw "white ribbons" surrounding them when they did the exercises. My mother called the white ribbons “energy mechanisms.”
This memory from my childhood about Falun Gong was so different from the groundless accusations taught to me in school.
I still struggled for a long time in my mind. At night I felt compelled to look for any scissors hidden under my pillow, because someone told me that practitioners stabbed their families with sharp objects.
My parents eventually divorced. Although I got to see my mother every week, I still feared that one day she would be arrested and leave me again.
Growing up without my mother around all the time, I believed that I had suffered a lot more than I should. I needed to find someone to blame, so I blamed my father for not rescuing my mother; I blamed my babysitter for being mean to me; I blamed my mother for not being there when I needed her; and I blamed Falun Gong for putting my mother through all the troubles.
Now I regret that I have been blaming the wrong people. I had always believed that it was my closest family members who put me through such unbearable pain. But it wasn't them. It was Jiang Zemin, a former Chinese dictator, who persecuted good people, broke up my family, and deprived me of the happiness that I longed for.
As family members of Falun Gong practitioners, if we continue to hide in the dark and not stand up for them, we are going against our conscience. We cannot miss the chance to support them and side with justice.
I asked my mother to document the suffering I endured in her lawsuit against Jiang.
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