Hello Everyone, I have posted a few times with bits of my story. Never felt the need to write it all out in one sitting. Reading others experiences has been a comfort throughout my grief process. I began the journey of fadeing from WT organization about 5yrs ago. I was 3rd generation JW. My entire 50+ yrs was centered within that world. I was taught this is not just a religion but a Way Of Life. I really had an ideal childhood, loving family and friends in So Calif. We were active in service and had great recreational activities, beach, camping, congo picnics, a very good clean shiny life. I had on the darkess rose colored glasses possible. In school I went through the paces with a bare minimum of effort. I loved art and design as well as science with school councilor encouraging college. Of course I obeyed the recomemedation to put all such ideas out of my head because there would be NO NEED for higher education because the END is so near1969... 1975-Yikes! I didn't need to wear braces on my teeth because Jehovah would fix that in the New World.....AS IF! I married a pioneer at 18 and we continued the shiny life for serveral years.....some bad things happened, yadda yadda, some good things happened, yadda yadda, I remarried and moved to another state with 4 children and started a whole new JW life. We raised them all in the Way of Life until the teen years when all Hell broke loose. My husband nor I had ever rebelled so we just did not know how to handle such chaos. We prayed, had family Bible study, tough love, required meetings and personal study, all that WT recommended good training. NO after school activies, sports, 'worldly friends'. We were deterrmind to have a picture perfect WT Family. Yeah Sure! They had their own ideas and dumped it all. We were soon alone with time on our hands. We started to take a look at the Way of Life from the childrens viewpoint and guess what? The rose colored glasses came off, the scales fell from my eyes. Old issues from my school years came flooding back. Evolution, Higher Eduction, Art, A fulfilling career...Save the Whales, the Cross, NWT of the Bible, Divine Name, UN, BRITHDAYS for godsake! ....you name the issue, it went through my brain. I developed depression and anxiety over the grief of losing what I thought was the Truth, the only Way of Life. Yes, the internet was the tool I used most. But I think I would have used the library and bookstore if the computer wasn't so convenient. For a long time my husband, a man of few words, tried to keep up the JW walls. I would bring up an issue and he would say 'Are we Jehovah's Witness's of NOT?" I started to say NOT and soon his own flood of concepts opened up. One day he just said 'I'm done' We did a bit of fading, less and less meetings and association. Within 6mo everything just ended. A few elders stopped by and some family members tried to get us back but soon that ended. We are not really shunned but there is a definite coolness from most JW's. One son is still in, very active but still warm toward us. We have a good relationship with the other children and often tell them how sorry we are that we were not better parents during their teen years. They seem to understand that we did what we thought was best at the time. We now know better so are trying to be better parents and grandparents.
I have left so much out but as I said before, I don't feel the need to take up this entire space with my History. It's really long and to me boring. Oh I forgot to say, I got over the depression and anxiety as the TRUTH about the Truth opened up. Phew!
I'm still working toward making a whole new life. Making new friends is difficult. I do get lonely so I thank everyone here for being my friends even though they may not know it. Ha Ha. I really enjoy lurking, sorry. I tend to get very emotional when I post so try to avoid that. For me it's best to put efforts into a possitive future. Because reading others stories has helped me I do see that I should be a bit more open about my own. I will try to post more often. (I love to use the Emoticons)
