An Amkid Talks About Life With Amway Ambot Parents

Amway fucks up another family. An Amkid remembers life in the Amway cult from 3 decades ago. Thanks for the insight into how kids understand how Amway destroys lives:

 

Recently some very close friends got “into the business”, and it has forced me to revisit how I feel about Amway and its impact on my childhood.

A profound sadness has hung over me since our friends told us they were considering a particular organization (which was not Amway, of course, eye roll, it is WWDB). I knew right then we were going to lose them as friends. This man has been my husband’s closest friend since high school. They have been through a ton together, and losing them is really devastating for us.

I carefully reminded them that I was an Amway kid (an Amkid?) and asked them if they wanted my perspective on growing up in Amway. I told them once and promised to support them thereafter. I knew if they didn’t hear that we are willing to support them, I would be cutting off our relationship right then and there. Nice baggage, huh.

My parents are ‘lifers’. They’ve been in since I was 8. That was 28 years ago. They had two deep teams that generated some income until they fell apart, probably 15-20 years ago.

My childhood was weirder than I realized.

-Annoyed neighbors. Weekly Tuesday night ‘product pickup’ which filled the street with the team coming to pick up their products. Weekly ‘team calling’ every Sunday night when all my Dad’s buddies would come over to call random people they had met at the grocery store, and shout ‘Loser’ or ‘Sap’ (what the heck is that anyway?) every time they got turned down. Those guys were loud down in the basement while my siblings and I were upstairs doing homework and preparing for the school week.

- Tools. Dumb, dumb tapes and books. I had NO IDEA that they were so expensive until I started reading about AmCult recently. Seriously, I thought upline was giving that stuff to my Dad. I hope my kids don’t think NPR is as annoying as I thought those tapes were.

- Negative wives. We heard all about these negative women, and how my mom struggled because she knew she was viewed as one. She is very introverted and not peppy enough. Yet she slaved over the weekly product order, product pick up, and angelically dealt with my Dad never being home. I tell you, I would be the negativest of negative wives ever.

- Functions. Gee, I wonder why we never took any family vacations? Because my parents had to go to 4 functions every year. They took us 1 time that I can remember, because some upline approved kids coming to a beach trip. A commenter above described it perfectly...we sat in the hotel room with a 13 year old babysitter watching R rated movies. The other times, my parents left us with babysitters that we didn’t really know or feel comfortable with. I am thankful that I never suffered any abuse other than neglect in any of these situations, and I hope my siblings were also safe.

- Lost friends. I bet my parents could have let us stay at friends’ houses for all those functions instead of getting weird babysitters, but they had alienated all their/our friends soon after getting into Amway. New friends were always business colleagues, and of course they came and went.

- Oh my word, stop. talking. to. everyone. My Dad would talk to everyone, everywhere. He is an extravert so he would probably have done that anyway, but I HATED knowing his friendliness was ultimately not genuine, at least I did not believe it could be. I would shuffle off and try to hide. It was always the same conversation with the same lead ins.

- Faith. After they started Amway, my parents drew away from church involvement and let Amway replace church for them. That’s something I have not seen much mention of in blogs, and it may be specific to LTD, Britt, or just the South. But in Amway, it was trendy to be a Christian, and all the functions had church services where droves of people would accept Christ like they had just been listening to Billy Graham. This made my Dad very excited, and I get why, but the lines were blurred between business and religion and it was about control, not about following the most humble man who ever walked the earth. As children, we lost connection with families from church that I, particularly, had grown up with. My parents had no more time for Bible studies or service projects, so we didn’t get to go either.

- Health. My Dad’s health suffered big time. He was a tall thin man who enjoyed working around the house before Amway. Then, then he became a man who constantly attended midnight meetings at IHOP, probably slept about 5 hours a night on average, and got fat. He has never lost all that weight, but he knows he can count on Nutri-lite vitamins to keep him going. That might have worked in his 40’s but he is in his mid 60’s now and I am very worried about him.

-Time. I suppose my Dad would have spent more time with us if he had been home in the evenings. Ultimately, I don’t think he was a bad as some people probably were, as I have never questioned his love and commitment. I’m not sure what I missed, but I was a very compliant child overall, and as a teenager I tasted a little freedom and normalcy and began to rebel and put as much emotional distance as I could between myself and my parents. It would not be until I had children that I truly wanted to be around them again.

These days, my parents are still trying to build their business, while they also work their annoying J.O.B.s (as an engineer and teacher). The only irritation for me is planning visits around functions. That really, really annoys me. I can’t see why they can’t see that their business has failed.

Our friends who have been sucked into Amway have presented the ‘plan’ to all of our mutual friends. One couple went through most of the process and went to several meetings (in another city, mind you, because we do not have an open meeting here). An upline told my pregnant friend, “This is the perfect time for you to start building your business, when you kids are babies. They won’t even remember you being gone!” I wanted to vomit when I heard that. Thankfully this couple decided to run the other way.