You can never go home again ...
Cedars: My Dad is still very much in denial over my feelings towards the Watchtower.
Of course, the alternative is too painful for him to contemplate. You're watching Cognitive Dissonance in action. As bad as that is, at least you have some communication, albeit superficial and limited to whatever they want to talk about. Many of us don't even have that.
Cedars: However, for all my work online trying to help total strangers, I'm powerless to do anything for my own flesh and blood.
We don't know what the future will hold. Perhaps your work will reach your family, maybe even indirectly. Maybe one of the strangers you help will influence your family members. Maybe your family members are reading your JWSurvey materials or posting here and don't even know it's you writing it. (Of course what you wrote here would probably out you to them if they read it soon.)
Cedars: My appearance has changed significantly since I stopped attending meetings, and this inevitably drew comments - with one elder telling me to "get my hair cut".
Isn't it absolutely ridiculous! Where the hell does this guy get the idea he can tell another adult how he should cut his hair? The elders are trained to treat the flock as if they are all children.
Cedars: ... it was yet another example of my personal beliefs being the subject of scrutiny, and the overwhelming pressure to conform to people's expectations that was an over-riding theme of my visit.
Interesting how JWs think that everyone else's business is their business. They have no respect for appropriate personal boundaries. Just a bunch of busy-bodies and gossips mistakenly believing their behavior is somehow sanctioned by God.
Cedars: Another example of this came in a brief conversation with my brother-in-law. We were having a brief discussion about another relative of mine. He made the remark that she was doing "really well at the moment" because she is attending meetings again. He must have known that I was no longer attending meetings myself, so how did this comment reflect on me? Was I NOT doing "really well" any more?
Yes, that is the message you were intended to get; it's passive-aggresive manipulation. They learned it from the WT/GB.
Cedars: ... it was seriously troubling to witness the effects first-hand in my own family - but be powerless to do or say anything.
Understood, and yet your example does send a message. You are demonstrating personal power. You never know who may be watching and be encouraged.
Cedars: The end product of it all is that I can no longer think of the place where I grew up as my home. I don't feel truly welcomed by my family because they clearly don't sincerely accept me for who I am - only for who they want me to be (or imagine me to be).
They cannot or will not accept you, at least not now and maybe never. Can you accept them? Can you accept yourself?
These changes are heart-rending, no doubt. I feel your pain. Yet you do have courage: you repeatedly demonstrate that here time and again by sharing your thoughts, feelings and experiences such as these; by exposing WT hypocrisy, cover-ups and lies.
Again, don't give up on your family. You never know. As long as there is life, there is hope. I honestly believe that many JWs still stuck-in feel all alone; they don't know how many of their "fellow believers" are really Fellow Doubters, perhaps even sitting next to them at the meetings. The WT deliberately isolates us psychologically. How many JWN lurkers come here and are AMAZED to find hundreds, thousands even, of current and ex-JWs that feel exactly the same way they feel. It's a powerful thing. It's a beautiful thing. Your work here and on your website is part of that.
But most of all don't give up on yourself and the beautiful new life you are making for your self and your wife.
Maybe someday soon you'll be able to shed the Cedars moniker and be live your life openly.
00DAD
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You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you. - Heraclitus of Ephesus (c.535 BC - 475 BC)
