Hello,
my name is Debra, and im an english ex-jehovahs witness,
I was baptised in the late 1980s, and married a brother a few months later, the following year we had a baby girl, a very much wanted baby girl too, but i suffered from post natel depression which got worse and worse, neither of us had any family around us to help and as you know we were discouraged from forming close friends with the world, my husband olso had a mental illness but that didnt stop him from pioneering and taking an active part in all the meetings, i began to get very spiritualy weak from missed meetings due to depression and a new baby, both my husband and myself spoke to the elders about this but we were ignored, it carried on until our child was 3 years old, in the meantime i had disassociated myself because the world offered more friends and i could be "me" not some puppet been told how im supposed to think, act, and feel, but i was still attending meetings and working towards eventual reinstatment, when our daughter was 3, due to a combination of hi! s illness, a small child, a depressed wife and the ussuell pressure from been in the truth brings he finaly broke down and asked the doctor for help, as a result of that social services were called in and they took our daughter into what they said was temporary care, still the elders were not interested, they didnt even visit, they simply told my husband to co-operate with them, a few months later social services decided they wanted to have our daughter adopted and said they would take us to court to get there way, two elders then visited us one a childless elder the other the presiding overseerer a father of 5 and a grandfather, they were most concerned at how this would look and forbade us to discuss the situation with anyone in or out of the truth, they didnt even like the fact we had to discuss it with our lawyer/solicitor and suggested that we dont, they wanted it to cause as little fuss as possible, we begged social services to place our child now olmost 4 with witnesses! s, and with our solicitors agreement we advertised for a witness family to come forward ourselfs, social services didnt mind our doing this, but the elders DID mind, the same two came round to our house and forbade us from doing this, they hated it, i can only assume it was coloring there whiter than white image a bit, they didnt like it, they accually said that it didnt matter how she was bought up, anyway needless to say we lost in the end and our child was adopted by persons unknown in the world, i dont think either of us attended any more meetings after that, my husband was hospitalised quite alot after that and died that year, i went to the funeral with two non witness friends of mine who were absolutly appalled by the way i was totaly ignored by the rest of the congregation, and one of them accually said within hearing of the elder conducting the service that if this is what the witnessess were like shed never talk to them ever again, Anyway ive sinced r! emarried and we have a little son, fortuntly he dislikes the witnessess as much as i do, we wont even let them ring our doorbell now.
i would like to write to other EX witnesses and hear there experiences
from Debra
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if you want her email, send me a note at [email protected]