HOW LONG WHILE YOU WERE A JW DID IT TAKE TO LEAVE? (page 3)

minimus

Hi HO, you tell me yours and I'll tell you mine....I am still working on the fade. Much of my family is seeing the wrongness of the "truth". . It is a process! But I am encouraged by all the comments here!

larc

It took me about 7 years. I went through several stages: true believer, believer with some nagging doubts, believer with major doubts, unbeliever wishing I could believe, total unbeliever.

Sentinel

This is an interesting thread.

I was fourteen when I got baptised. I was full of fear of Armegeddon, having been told that I was at "the age of understanding". As I grew up, I saw many inconsistencies. Questioning was not allowed. By the time I was 21, I began to rebel in my own way, which just ended up hurting me the most. My self esteem was at an all time low, so after marrying an outsider and having a child, I returned and was reinstated. I returned because my family was screwed up, and I wanted to belong and be loved and accepted. What a blunder. I stayed in until I was 36, just basically attending a meeting here and there. I tried to just ease myself away so that I wouldn't be labeled, but that proved impossible. Finally in 1981, I took a stand and left totally, never going back. I lost my parents in the process as they "disowned" me for almost twelve years.

After I "escaped", my marriage ended and I made some changes in my life. I began a mission to try to improve myself and "re-train" my thinking. I had been emotionally damaged, which was affecting my health. The process was nearly twenty more years, mostly because I didn't know where to go to get the right kind of help. Things have certainly changed in the past several years.

When I found this forum a couple months ago, I was so grateful to have a place to come to. We have a common bond here, as anyone who has been a JW, or had a relationship with a JW, or still do, there is love and acceptance. We can tell our stories and vent.

All in all JW's affected me "inside my head" until probably October of last year. I was finally able to get to that place where they could no longer haunt me in my dreams or in my life. So, altogether that is about 42 years of unresolved crap that I "lived with" every day of my life. I have no lingering doubts at all that they are wrong and that they teach false doctrines and have mind control over their followers. They are a cult.

My mother is still in there..........., but at least we have been communicating regularly.

Love and Light,

Sentinel

Mulan

I was pretty much raised in it. My parents were baptised when I was 4 1/2. I was baptised at age 9 1/2. I still can't believe they let me do it.

I married at 17, and by age 34, had 4 kids, an elder husband, and a great life. In about 1991, while I was pioneering, my husband began researching things, and talking to some elder friends who all had doubts. He was the WT conductor, so had lots of conflicts with information he had to teach, and what he was finding out in his research. He read Ray Franz' books, to my horror, and shared much of it with me. By 1995, I realized he had found the REAL truth. In '96, he resigned as an elder, and we started fading away. In 1997 I read C of C, and didn't want to go to another meeting, but he talked me into not doing it abruptly. so in late 1997, we walked out of the KH one night, and never went back.

We are not df'd or da'd.

Disengaged

Hi Minimus It hit me like a tonna bricks. Wasted a lifetime in da borg & troof. "you tell me yours and I'll tell you mine" Is that like you show me yours, and I'll show you mine? Hi Mulan, Thanks for your experience on leaving. Very similar to my story.

Edited by - Disengaged on 14 August 2002 13:37:38

Tinkerbell4125

I was raised a j.w. I'm 42 now. I've was in and out, but actually left in 1999. Hubby and I both disasociated ourselves at the same time. He was raised in the borg also.

Too me, being raised as a j.w. and then finding out everything that you have believed all your life has been nothing but a distorted lie, it is like a ton of bricks being slapped right across your face.

I'm out, not looking back!

waiting

Baptized at 21, left at 51. Didn't really have that many doubts, but then I wasn't considered one of the ones in the "inner circle." I was a "fringe."

Took about 6 months of writing to WT about a different matter - then we decided to "wait on Jehovah", as the Society instructed our CO "not to speak to them. We'll speak with them." Thus, my name "waiting."

Lol............been almost 3 years of waiting. When inlaws keep asking when we are coming back, we say we're waiting on Jehovah, just as we've been instructed - and since the Society says that they're God's Only Channel to Mankind, we're waiting on them. And waiting, and waiting, and waiting...................

waiting

Beans

ONE DAY!

As soon as I turned 16, or I guess you could say 16 years!

Beans

DanTheMan

I am very fortunate in that I don't have JW family. Starting in 2000 or so, I slowly (and not totally consciously) began to fade. I quit carrying my blood card, I started spending more time with my family, read less and less of the pubs, paid little or no attention during the indoctrination portions of the meetings. But I was doing the "It's the Truth, I'm just not good enough so what's the point" fade.

Last March I spent about three days and nights immersing myself in all the websites I had been so programmed to be afraid of.

The following week, the elders got my "take-your-cult-and-shove-it" letter.

Dismembered

25 years here, A lifetime wasted in many ways.

HOW LONG WHILE YOU WERE A JW DID IT TAKE TO LEAVE?

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