I really do have to add this as well here. When I finally "left", I wrote a letter and sent it to the headquarters and to the local KH. I specifically asked that the letter be read before the congregation. My mom said it never was. In fact, my exit was well known, but not really talked about. They did not df me, and I thought it quite odd that they didn't. They had my letter and I was quite explicite with my feelings and complaints and observations, etc. If ever they had an apostate, it was me I suppose. I never was one to just "accept" the JW belief system as coming from 'god'.
They all acted like they were afraid of me, including my mom, who began shunning me completely, even though I was not df'd. She spread the word around, but no one ever called me or came by after that. It was as if I had the plague. It was about a year later that four elders visited me--the ones I had known since first being baptized. They were kind and loving and genuiene it appeared, but they were trying to blame my decision to leave on my mother. Seems like the women in the congregation were getting a bit too open with their independent thinking and they were trying to corrale several for discipline. I didn't give them that satisfaction, although I did get to kindly explain how I'd been lost for many years inside a cult, and that I was finally free.
They left saying I was not df'd and that I should feel comfortable about coming back, if only on a Sunday to listen to a "talk". Of course I never did, and that was the last time I ever saw any of them. Two of them were crying as they walked away....it broke my heart.
