by peaches 51 Replies latest jw friends
From birth till about 19, but fading before that and occasional attendance through 24.
Final straw: them putting my dad into limbo of "self DA" for questioning who was commanded to go door to door.
You'd think the molestation would have done the trick.
this has been so interesting for me....thank you all so much....it is nice to get to know about you some....everyone has been through so much....just a couple of things....Dozy--thanks for the update on the school issue!!! i had no idea it was like that now...not surprized really,,,,just thought maybe some common sense might have sunk in....
also,,,,for sd7.....did you ever get to be with the girl you waited 3 years for????? you must have dearly loved her....how awful for you....thanks everyone....
PEACHES- Fantastic thread my friend ! Good job ! This is what newbies and all of us need on the board to feel like we all have been survivors together in similar experiences , yet experienced seperately. It creates healing by knowing none of us were the only ones being abused by a mind control cult.
I've told my story many times here - but briefly I was born in and stayed a JW until over 6 years ago exiting at age 44. Came from a VERY well known and active JW family in California and the pressure was put on me as I hopped out of the womb from my mother to be elder material as I aged into my late 20's ! Served as a MS for 6 years , but towards the late 1980's I saw corruption, politics, and brown nosing with brothers trying to get appointed as elders - I would have NONE of that. I was too independent and never kissed up to anybody- just to get a position. Too blatantly honest.
Towards the end of the 1990's I REALLY started having " quiet doubts " about the 1914 fiasco and the alleged " generation " doctrine. My JW wife and I divorced in 1998 as she was feeling jilted that I never became the elder and " spiritual head " she fantasized about ! LOL ! I actually was DFed for 4 years ( 1998 to 2002 ) and came back in for a year and a half due to being scared $hitless by the 9/11 attacks in 2001. But towards the end of 2003 I had my camel straw breaking moment when the elders gave me their OWN counsel as advice rather than the Bible or the WT publications. My non- witness wife had left me due to a methamphetamine drug habit and I was glad as she was dangerous to me and my teenage daughters. A few months after she left the elders said I should get BACK with her ! They said if I my ex-wife felt uncomfortable around my JW daughters - then I could visit my daughters in a safe location, neutral like a park so they wouldn't come to my home ! I told them I disagreed with that counsel. It was at that point I realized these guys really didn't care about me OR my daughters. I told them I wasn't going to appease a drug abuser so my witness daughters couldn't visit me ! With that- I walked to my seat at the kingdom hall, grabbed my books and left cold turkey in late 2003- never going back. I have never been happier these past 6 years ! Freedom is sweet ! Peace out, Mr. Flipper
26 years
But when the WT JG took away his spirit from me, I felt it was time for me to leave.
This is an absolutely fascinating thread. Thanks everyone for your honesty and openness. You have helped a lot of people.
5th generation from mexico. Baptized at 15, Bethel Volunteer 15-16, Pioneer-16-Reproved-16, MS-21, 23 Removed, 25 Dfd. But still faithful til 39.
My cousin and I were planning to go back last year and he mentioned some stuff about Rusell and Rutherford that was nasty. Went to district convention 09 then. I started looking into R&R. Did research for 3 weeks straight. Then I contacted my cousin to tell him all the things I had found but he had gotten reinstated 2 days earlier. I found out about Pedophilia and UN involvement. My elders approached me to get reinstated. I mentioned that i needed some answers but they asked me to wait until I was reinstated. Never went back to KH and they never contacted me again either. Got Apocalypsis delayed and Crisis of Consience and those books plus some youtube videos, this website and freeminds.org did the job.
I'm not a JW and never have been, but my bro is and has been for 20+ years. He and his family [wife and 2 kids]. Nothing has gone right for them since being baptised as JWs. Every decision has been a train wreck from home schooling, to his business (he owned a successful business), their married life has been full of controvesy, not attending family funerals, being quite judgemental and when I finally learned enough scripture to show how he has been duped, he answered that he didn't care. He didn;t care that he's been lied to for years and that his fruits are falling to the ground and rotting. My prayer is that he will return to our family with his family and we can pray with love, hope and faith for a brighter future......I'm not holding my breath.
dc
About 32 years in. Mother became JW when I was about 2 years old.
The final straw was when I asked for a shepherding call on hubby and I, they were of no help at all. Instead they attacked hubby about working and how he should be doing more in service/meetings. (Hubby was already mentally out, I was trying to spiritually "save" us).
I was mad as a wet hornet! They criticized. They looked at the pictures of family weddings I had framed and said that we would want our children to marry a JW. They talked about how the annointed would be given positions higher than the angels.
It made no sense and revealed their lust for power, and inability to really spiritually help an individual. I felt our family was spiritually dying and they were my last hope.
I think that was the last straw. It also may have been the last assembly we attended where I wanted to get up and scream "LIAR! That's not what that scripture is saying!" It was some hog wash about an anti-type. As loyal as I was, I never bought the anti-type crap. I just pushed it to the side. We left at lunch time. I had a hard time staying until then, but hubby said we needed to not cause a scene. We went back to the hotel. You have never seen two little kids so happy! They were on cloud nine that we weren't going back! We spent the next day at the zoo where I felt a million times closer to God and spiritual than any day in a Kingdom Hall!
Thankfully in all my auxilary pioneering I never had a study or brought someone into the cult. There were so many baby steps that led up to these last straws, but these are the final deal breakers for me.
I was only in for about seven years, but it's hard to tell how long I would've hung on if my life had not been in danger. The last straw for me was realizing that the elders didn't care that my jw husband was threatening to kill me, although the legal and medical professions saw fit to forcibly commit him to a mental hospital.
Husband and I were in from very young ages. He served as an elder (and worked his ass off for the Borg I might add) for 26 years. Then when we attended the backyard wedding of my daughter, who was disfellowshipped, my husband was removed as an elder. Much backbiting, gossip and general nasty behavior by the self righteous ones appointed to clean up Dodge. The whole matter went back to Brooklyn, and some committee there decided we had put family ties over loyalty to Jehovah.
I decided to read the bible to really understand if there was any basis for this kind of thinking - I really read it with a bible dictionary, commentaries, an interlinear and different translations. I realized that what I read in the NT had very little to do with what was taught at the Kingdom Hall. My epiphany was that the parable of the faithful and discreet slave was just that - simply a parable, only one of maybe 30 or so that Jesus gave about personal behavior. Not a prophecy telling Christians they had to look for an organization to be "saved" and certainly not a reason for a small group of men, the GB, to seize power over their fellow slaves and steal the position of mediator from Jesus. You must be associated with THEM to be saved. That is unscriptural and blasphemous, in my opinion. After that, I decided to work up my courage and read everything I could get my hands on and it all fell like a house of cards.
Jehovah's Witnesses are a high control and dangerous cult. So, oddly enough, the last straw for me was reading the bible and, after 42 years, understanding what it said didn't jive with JW doctrine.
