In my totally overwhelming 53 years of human existence, I've finally learned that "it isn't what you think you know; it's what you've been through" that matters to most other people. So, as an unwilling, though also willing, participant in that cycle of life and death, belief and unbelief, I will offer more to you more than I've ever said to any group of folks than I've ever known. That's JWD
I hope that it counts for something, perhaps even a little thing, in your lives as ex-JWs.
I will absolutely not name names, so don't ask.
I was their first-born son, in 1952, to parents that had only been "introduced" to the WTS in 1951. Neither of my parents had any strong religious affiliation beforehand, but their own experiences were difficult and extreme: living through the Great Depression, being abandoned as children. Throughout every decade since, they have been denied and ignored by their families, to this very day...and not just because they became JWs.
But, naturally, and as a human need, they then searched for, and supposedly found, a purpose for their existence, first offered to them by a now "Nethinim" member, as they engaged in a Bible Study with that person. They also took great offense at a person who is now in a position of considerably higher responsibility in the WTS; a person who they met personally; and, to this day, I don't know exactly what happened. So be it.
But these are part of the events that formed me, as a mere child; supposedly before I even had a mind to comprehend what was going on, right?
And we're just to age 1.
Craig