Started to properly wake up late April 2008. By June 2008 was feverishly researching Society doctrine using their publications and the Bible (it was the Bible that properly woke both my wife and me up) and by July 2008 - after sitting through the District Convention with my ears wide open to what was being taught - I resigned as an elder and ceased meeting attendance.
My wife and I wanted to avoid being cut off from family, so we kept our mouths shut as to our reasons for not attending meetings anymore. What was shocking was how our conditional-friends didn't even want to know our reasons for leaving 'the truth', but were happy to tell us they couldn't have anything to do with us anymore; we weren't DFd at the time.
We enjoyed a summer of meeting and service free weekends, but we soon started to yearn for some fellowship. We still held Christian values and viewed ourselves as being non-denominational Christians but kinda balked about church. Gail decided to attend an Alpha course and that led to us tentatively attending our first ever church services. We choose an evangelical church as we knew we wouldn't like the formalism of the Church of Scotland.
Our eyes became further open to the Watch Tower Society lies regarding "so-called Christians" and we began attending church every Sunday and soon found ourselves making new friends. As we knew one of our children would eventually mention to JW family that we go to church, I told my father. He was under the impression that we would, at some point, return to the KH, so I had to put him straight on that. Because I'd 'confessed' our church-going to him, I was put in a position of having to tell an elder so that my dad wouldn't have to turn us in to the congregation. I complied with this and eventually met with two elders - two elders whom I'd been serving with just a few months before - and gave them Gail's DA letter, while I verbally DAd myself by admitting I'd gone to church.
They cited the verses which apply to the anti-christ as being the reason why we were to be shunned by family and former friends. This was October 2008.
It's now March 2009, we're firmly plugged into a small, independent evangelical church, we've made new friends, we've got a new baby in the family whom we firmly believe is a gift and a blessing from God, life is good and we're in possession of a deep seated feeling of peace and joy.
Yes, at times the JW mentality still kicks in, yes at times I get angry at the shunning (we have family members who haven't even acknowledged the birth of our new son. They live locally to us, they could even just send an email...), but we strangely don't miss anyone we left behind in the Org.