There was a family in my cong that I was really close to...dad's an elder, mom's a pioneer, they had a son and daughter. About 5yrs ago though, when I was still IN my JW trance - the son married a non-JW and faded while the daughter was DF'd. Due to my judgemental training, I 'shunned' both of them out of duty (not because I didn't care about them). But these 2 were SUCH good friends!! Their parents would always discuss how disappointed they were that thier kids didn't come back...and so i never really ran into either of them nor felt it would be 'acceptable' to try to contact them.
Anyhow, found BOTH of them on good ol Facebook and reached out to them. The girl friended me right away and we caught up online! But the son took awhile...so I sent him a msg telling him that I was DF'd and that if he chose not to associate with me, I would understand and respect that. WELL...he DID friend me and we ended up chatting for a LONG time last night!! Not only was he happy to hear from me, but he also said that my being DF'd was 'only by man - NOT by God' and that led into us discussing the org and how twisted it is. HE has the same feelings as we all do (here on JWN) about JWs and religion as a whole...he read CofC...we talked about all the discrepancies...and his 'hang up' is the generation topic! I told him about this site (hopefully he joins) and then we ended the convo.
All in all it was soooo good to catch up with an old friend and to be able to learn that THEY also feel just like I do!!!