My Whole Life Seems Like A Fabrication (page 2)

What-A-Coincidence

yes. welcome! thank you for joining us. it's a honor to have you aboard.

wac - xelder xbethelite

oh geez, why do they have to do that?!
Ok, I'm SO Not backing them up but....
Just keep in mind that they truly do love you and this is all so new to them still and they are scared that you won't make it through the big A.
Sucks though eh?

welcome here

Black Swan of Memphis until I can figure out how to get my of Memphis back.

poppers

Hello, and welcome to JWD. It sounds like you and hubby are leaving together - that should make things easier.

Gill

Welcome!

Sounds like we have the same husband! What an honour to have married someone with the sense to not fall for all that BS!!

I spent many hours crying and bewailing to a counsellor the fact that I would never be spoken to by my family again for leaving the 'troof'. Now I wish they'd all *&%$ off! Only my parents speak to us and if I hear that Armageddon is coming soon and we must take the children to the meetings or they'll die too, I may yet strangle the pair of them! So count your blessings that you won't see your parents again. They obviously don't deserve such a bright and honest daughter and son in law!

Hope to hear more from you soon.

juni

Welcome JC to the forum.

As the rest of the friends here have said it's good that your husband is on the same page as you. None of our relatives are JWs so I never had to deal w/shunning from that source. They were just upset that we were JWs. Maybe in time they'll change their mind. Too bad that they chose to come to your work place. That is not the place to unload on someone. I was shunned by former friends of 21 years.

As someone else here said and I agree that in time it's good to make new friends. Explore new things and get on with your life.

Best to you and your husband.

Juni

Swan

Welcome JC!

Quandry

Spit

Welcome. I hope once your family gets over the initial shock of your decision they may become more reasonable. I hope you still express your love for them. Realize that if this had happened to another family member some years ago, you might have reacted the same way. Fear is a strong motivating force. They must fear for your life. They are angered that you would "leave Jehovah." They are conditioned to respond this way.... I know I was for years. My husband and I were in over 30 years and would gladly have hosted GB members, thinking our house would be blessed by their holiness.

You did not give the reason for your leaving. Did you finally get curious and go to the websites, or something else?

sspo

Welcome

Hang in there, i think all on this board have gone thru similar hell because of the GB policy of shunning even when you are not df.

okie46

Welcome JC HoHo No Mo!! My Mom put me on a bit of a guilt trip too when I first left. I am sorry you are having to go through this, it is so difficult at first. I have to say that even though I feel relief at no longer having to put up with the constant guilt trip from the self-righteous people, it continues to be painful when it comes to famiy matters and loved ones who won't communicate with me, in my case it is my daughter. That is why this board is so helpful to me, to see that others have had the same experiences and felt the same things.

Pioneer Spit...oh, i mean Spirit

Thank you so much for the quick, kind and supportive responses.

One of the things that helped me over the first few hurdles was an article about Joy Castro that one of my good friends and co-workers found in the NY Times Magazine. Weeks later, I purchased Joy's book, brilliantly titled: The Truth Book. It's the well-written story of her life and years living with her abusive-sexual-predator-ex-Bethelite step-father. At any rate, I recommend it. The author is now successful and well-educated--things that the Hohos forbid.

Reading it was a turning point for me, for here was someone my age who had started out on the same path as I did, but left it as a teenager. She had shaped her own life, become successful and here I was feeling like I just woke up from a coma. I don't feel like my life is a failure. Yet every success made me an outcast to the Hohos and my family. Check this out: I have a great husband, he's my best friend--my mom says his spiritual weakness is the reason I left the religion; I have a career that I enjoy in car sales--family and Hohos say 'it'll be nice when you can find another job where you can be honest and get out of that bad atmosphere''.

I argued with my mom about education for a while near the end there, she said that on my company's website she saw that many sales people had in their bio's listed their degrees and education. She said that was stupid because she had just learned at the assembly how expensive a single college semester can be, stupid because 'all these people can do anyways is sell cars now'. The truth is, most of 'these people' had previous careers, were laid off for different reasons and now are in a field that provides well, and yes, it requires no initial investment. My mom has never worked as an adult, has no concept of supporting a family except what the literature says. Now, my parents are not wealthy, but they own a nice home Northern AZ--that and everything else is willed to the society. Like the rest of us, I was told that education is naughty, besides apparently being expensive, so a dose of real truth that I figured out: The society forbids higher education also because of it's cost, for, if all those JW parents in the 50's-80's had sent all of their children to college, there would be nothing left to give to the organization. Plus, they would have had to work harder in order to pay for it, hence, no pioneering.

My husband and I both feel like we grew up as pawns in a stupid game, and now we're paying the price, the price for being afraid to buy a house in this system, to protect our credit, to save for the future. . .we've even put off having children. Like we were pushed along, right into life with no preparation and when things didn't go well moneywise, for instance, it was our own fault. I wasted 11 years, from age 18 to 29, regular pioneering, while my husband struggled to support us. I realize that I grew up afraid of everything, of everyone that's not Hoho, afraid when we watched as 'World Events That Seemed To Mean Something' turned out to be nothing over and over again, afraid of people in the cong who seemed to showed a rebellious attitude or wear too much black, afraid of crazy Arizona thunderstorms that could have been armageddon, afraid because I cussed, afraid of dying the everlasting death because I really was embarrassed when I went to a classmate's door when I was on service, and Jesus did say 'if you're ashamed of me, I will be ashamed of you'.

And now, honestly, we're really pissed, that's the truth. When I think about it all real hard, like I am now, I am really angry. I really hate the Hohos. (My good friend that passed along the article about Joy Castro early on, she was raised Jewish, unbelievably she cannot pronounce Je----ah's Witlesses without much notice and ended up just calling them Hohos.) Everything I read about them makes me more angry, including things like the Malawi/Mexico thread. . .we used to go to Rocky Point, Mexico and true, the KH's were called Education Centers, and true, they didn't carry bibles in service or to meeting and the real reason for it was not what we were told back then. . .everything I believed was a lie, even things that didn't directly affect me. It's a lie that parents should love their children, because there are exceptions. I've learned unconditional love from my husband and my friends, those worldly bastards.

My last email conversation with my oldest sister ended up with me having to copy back my own sentences, and asking her, 'Where did I say this or that? Look at my words, I said no such thing!' Their thinking is so twisted, they twist things that you haven't even said yet, it's beyond belief. I have cut off all contact with my ex-family. There seems to be no hope for any of them, they'll languish and die while some 'younger GB replacements' change the rules and the dates and their hopes.

And yes, I too know now that I'll die one day, that my husband will die, that we want to have children and we know the consequences of all of it and wonder what will come next, and it's really freaking awesome and exciting, this life thing.

Thank you, thank you for being here and for listening. That you all understand is soothing, just thank you.

My friends call me Catfish.

My Whole Life Seems Like A Fabrication