Charlie Manson

It's been 40 years since the Tate LaBianca murders in California. I was 15 years old and it was 1969. I had recently moved to California to live with my Dad, his wife, and their collective five children and it was all very disorienting. I understood the girls who lived with Manson. They had difficult families, were looking for love, rejected the norm, but still wanted to belong. I could have been one of them.

I didn't know Sharon Tate, but I went to school with her sister. The trial was a point in time where everything seemed to implode. Our community and parents changed, everything in our lives changed. I really had to question what I was doing. I had never really thought about what would happen to me if I kept doing something for a long time. I became a vegetarian and started to explore a more spiritual life. I realized that I was the only one who was really going to take care of myself and that I was, ultimately, the only one responsible for myself.

Today I remember the innocence, the innocent, and the crazed--the people and the rejected parts of our selves. I pray for them all.

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