Oh where to begin I am a born in witness witness mother and father and grandparents though only 2 of the 4. I was born in the early 80’s and immediately my parents faced the blood transfusion issue course in their minds at the time it wasn’t an issue it was not gonna happen. I don’t wanna go into too much detail but fortunately it worked out well as is evidenced by my writing of this back story.
So let me move on I feel I had a pretty good upbringing my dad was an elder and my mom a pioneer for a little while but don’t remember her being one. I had the usual spiritual goals that most witness children have I got baptized at 13 then I started running mics and doing sound and giving more talks. I didn’t always care much for how I got treated in school had some issues with bullies and in middle school I secretly dated a couple girls at the same time and never went so far as to have sex but kissing and fondling that was it. My witness friend at school who was also an outsider like me actually caught me fondling a girl but he was a good friend and never told on me. But after I got baptized I didn’t do that so I felt clear. Now I still did do what all teenage boys do and did it a lot but I always rationalized that masturbating is better than having sex and I was single anyway so I never felt too guilty I did a little but got over it quickly (no pun intended or is it lol). So as I moved on to high school I home schooled cause I didn’t want to deal with the kids at school anymore. I loved it I slept in did 10-12 hour school days and did school 2-3 days a week. I had no aspirations for the future as per my indoctrination other than to pioneer and move my way up in the organization. I started pioneering at age 18 and was a ministerial servant (MS) by age 19.
At age 20 I started dating a girl from my pioneers school. At that time I had stopped pioneering because my parents encouraged me to go to school and get a skill to live on I didn’t like it at the time but I wasn’t opposed. I took what I thought would be the easy way and went to a private college got a two year degree and since then I have never used it. At that time I was in the mindset of why shouldn’t I keep on pioneering I’ll trust in Jehovah and I’ll be just fine. Well the girl I was dating we moved very fast and we ended up committing watchtower’s version of fornication and I broke up with her. A few weeks later I hadn’t mentioned anything about what we had done and if I’m honest I wasn’t going to. I liked being an MS and didn’t wanna lose that position. At that few week mark I was out with my family still recovering from the emotions of a breakup I got a call from her dad threatening me that if I didn’t go to the elders about what we did he would (apparently she told her dad). I ended up being publicly reproved. I still never understood why because I didn’t do anything that anyone knew about I guess it was to make an example of me. I call that abuse of power when I look back on it.
And that ended my time of being an MS. Several months later I met who is now my wife. And again I fell into the same pattern with her and this time we went further. One day after we had gotten engaged my dad pulled me aside and asked if we had done anything and I wasn’t able to look him in the eye and just say no even though I knew she’d be ok with me doing that. But we ended up getting married and we were publicly reproved. Again same point as last reproof don’t understand why it had to be public at this time I wasn’t anything in the hall except a newly married man. But I didn’t question even though it didn’t set right.
Now forward to just after we had our second child I had my first wave of doubts. And I read things I was indoctrinated not to and was really for the first time opening my mind up. We even expressed these doubts to the elders at the hall and as a result we had them come to our house and they studied with us. Those brothers meant well we didn’t get disfellowshipped or anything because we started going to meeting fairly regularly so that helped our cause too. My wife’s dad is an elder and has been this whole time and still is to this day.
My parents started falling away at this point and we had even had many conversations about it they eventually became apostates. And I started closing my mind back up cause of how good my wife’s family was treating us. And to this day I’m still in but looking to get back out. I call this my second awakening.
What started me waking up again was I had my doubts resurfacing and I started to watch YouTube. I came across the Australian Royal Commission (ARC) videos and was especially intrigued by Geoffrey Jackson’s testimony about disfellowshipped and disassociated ones and how he wasn’t able to give biblical reasons why they are necessary. I’m sorry if this is the true religion then he should’ve been proud that they do that. He and the other bethelites I saw on there all skirted around just about every question and are so inflexible on the big issues and that got me to thinking. And what I thought was what a load of crap his really is so I kept watching. I have been using sites like jwfacts.com I started reading crisis of conscience (although I’m not very far along yet wish I had an audiobook of it) and I am seeing the hypocrisy and lies and the manipulation. I’ve also been getting real tired of the fear mongering and the big one here pushing loyalty and obedience without question. What!? Why can’t I question I’m human and am prone to ask why I’ve never liked being told to do something without a reason even from the time I was a kid. So my biggest thing now is I wanna have my research in a format that I can have legitimate references from and I want to get a file together so that if anyone ie: my wife sees it then it’s legitimate and not something that is just off random sources. Study was never a strong suit growing up in the organization we never studied we read their publications and never anything else. But as for my wife I have a strong hope for her to join me I don’t think she’s that far off from leaving anyway it’s just her family keeping her around. She tries to be a good jdub but doesn’t care either kinda hard to explain. So that is what’s waking me up and there are other things too but those are the big ones.
Currently I am still in I am working on my exit strategy but now my kids are a bit older I should’ve walked away before. But here I am awake and seeing through the propaganda being fed to the masses. I’m working on my wife but it’s gonna be a slow process. It is rather interesting though to go to meetings with a whole new outlook but still kinda drives me nuts but I’m gonna cope with it for now.
As of now I’m gonna stick with just my pseudonym Former2free my dad is still totally ADD and my mom is reopened mind. I just reconnected with them recently after having shunned them for years trying to be a good jdub. But it still didn’t set well I missed them a lot through that time and felt anger at them leaving then started to miss them and feel bad for doing that to them. Although I’m not at the point of reshaping my beliefs yet I still feel the parable of the prodigal son applies to how love should be shown and not what an organization tells you to do and feel. It has been a wonderful reunion and we have literally spent hours every week on the phone catching up and talking about everything and now we can truly open up and it has made our relationship so much stronger. I know this doesn’t happen often and for those of you going through this still be patient if you can express your unconditional love for them and let them know you are there when they need you. And if anyone reading this needs someone to talk to about this please don’t be afraid to message me I’ll be here to help in any way I can. But now I feel I’m getting very lengthy here as my bio intro here I’m not on this one a lot as I am still not public about this yet so please be patient and if there are any replies I will do my best to look and reply back if necessary thanks for reading this.