thanks refiner thats two thinks I am mentally challenged BooHoo!!! Simon!! they are calling me nasties---tell em off
Background of those leaving
by freedom96 13 Replies latest jw friends
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Ravyn
I was born and raised third generation in NJ, right on Bethel's doorstep. My father was an elder from the first and he started partaking in 1974 the year I was baptized(age 12). I quit school and pioneered. I pioneered for 15 yrs(without cheating on my time slip) and moved all over the US to serve where I was needed. I was single and did not plan on getting married, even had a tubal ligation done just in case I did get married so I would not be tempted to have kids and get 'distracted'. Of course there is much much more to my story than this, all the manipulative mindsets, and cult brainwashing. But those are the facts of the matter. I saw corruption for years. But I blamed it on people not congregations and surely not the ORG. When I left my father's house, and my family fell away without me(not arrogant here, just truthful), it took about 10 years to see for myself that the ORG was a different place than I had been led to believe it was. I left because of a scandal that touched me personally, but really that was not what took me out. I had had doubts for years and one day I just stopped answering them with 'in Jehovah's due time...' and started to THINK. That was the beginning of the end for me. I got books I was not supposed to get(and I am not yet talking about Ray's stuff--I mean just books on subjects that were 'not encouraged' like anthropology and Bible history from someone other than the ORG's standpoint...) Then I went to the internet. All that together served to take me out and show me freedom. And I was not struck by lightening nor was my first sexual experience at 34 yrs old the big deal such a thing as 'fornication' was made out to be(LOL I did not look different or feel different and no one suspected and I felt no guilt or compulsion to share my experience with any elders...) It did occur to me once or twice briefly that I had 'seared' my conscience...but I put that off as superstition as I seemed happier and more human than I had ever been. It was actually improving me as a person. Hmmmm.... So I planned it carefully so as not to hurt anyone I knew who I thought would be hurt and over the next year I made my escape. I moved, changed my name, drastically changed my looks(dropped 100 pounds). I went to an internet friend who was a Unitarian Universalist and also a Brown Professor in the Boston area. I used the Harvard library and went to seminars and attended the UU fellowship and I was so happy. It was so new and fresh and yummy! I met my husband about 6 months into that and I have never once regretted leaving or turned to look back. I am now a practicing witch and a student of life. I regret sometimes, the years I lost to the ORG, the friends who I dont know anymore, but the pros far outweigh the cons.
My family is all whacked anyway. If I had stayed in I would have had to shun most of them by now. So now I have a relationship with the ones I WANT to have a relationship with, on my terms-not based on some set of rules by a cult.
I am no longer afraid of the World. Or demons, or elders or ....JWs are afraid of everything even their god...so sad. So my background was that I was a lifer, I was one of the best they had. I left because I think I just outgrew it.
Ravyn
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refiners fire
....thats two thinks I am mentally challenged.....
Miss mouthy. I count myself among the formerly mentally challenged. Of course, there are those, even here on this site, who think I still am mentally challenged.
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Ravyn
not sicko necessarily. VULNERABLE people, and sickos of various sorts just happen to be some of the most vulnerable. Mouthy is the perfect example! Shame on the BORG for exploiting your pain and troubles! It makes me nauseous now to think that I used to look in the newspaper for obits to send the family tracts on the resurrection! Those of us born into it were made vulnerable, the ones who didn't buy into the whole victimization were the lucky ones who left early. the rest of us did not know any better until something clicked in our brains and we started to think, or someone pushed us just too far, or the BORG went over the dge that time, etc...it isnt the scandals that take us out, it is the shock of the scandals that jump start our brains!
Ravyn