So here's something crazy

Younglove1999

I've been on a fitness message board for several years now and throughout this time have met some nice people and so on.

About 2 1/2 years ago, I had posted a picture of myself and my husband that was taken in Brooklyn (of course during a Bethel tour *vomits*) Anyways, I got a private message from a fellow board member wanting to know what religion I was because she doesn't know that many people who get dressed up to merely walk around Brooklyn. Long story short, we find out we're both JW's. Of course the elephant in the room, us being on the internet and in chat rooms, gets addressed once in awhile as we become closer friends. We used to email back and forth throughout the years about our new "goals" to be motivated-do the "right" thing-spend less time on the internet- and so on. Obviously we never follow through because we're both still "regulars" in this community. She knows I've had "issues" with people in my new hall but doesn't know the extent of my feelings. We both talke via this message board about working out and being mom's (she had 3 boys, a set of twins and a newborn, all under the age of 2-God bless her!). Anyways, from what I gather, I don't think they're very active either, but just that, inactive. Whereas, my husband and I aren't playign that game we want to do holidays, birthdays, etc. I have a journal on this other message board, but well suffice it to say, I can't be 100% honest about things because she's reading it everyday. Somebody asked me at this "community" what my little one is going to be for Halloween and I realized that I can't keep pretending to "not see that post" and just not being myself in my OWN journal.

A part of me hopes she's out there on JWD reading this and sends me a message saying "thank god I know- I feel the same way too" and I won't have to hide.

Otherwise, it looks like in my steps to be true to myself, i may lose another "friend"

I don't know if I should talk to her first before I just outrightly start a post one day talking about buying my daughter's first ornament or just go with it and see how she reacts.

it's weird

GermanXJW

I personally think that freedom is a precious thing and leaving the JW was not achieved if you still have to hide. Let us know about the development.

Gopher

Interesting that you use "friend" inside quotation marks. This is not a person you've seen in real life, and maybe never will see?

I'd hope you can just be yourself, because it's hard to walk along that border forever. If you lose a friendship over being real, then its her loss IMHO. Who knows, she may surprise you and be non-juudgmental over your 'worldliness' -- if the friendship is worth keeping in her view.

Younglove1999

yeah, I've never met her before-

I still think she's an amazing person though so I don't just want to brush off the friendship as not important merely because we haven't met in person, but at the same time, it doesn't make sense to not be true to myself because i'm worried about what my internet friend is going to think of me.

hmmm....

Younglove1999

She's in Canada and I'm in the U.S.

Her father is an elder and I know this is a long shot- but what if she "reports" me? Is that even possible?

Hortensia

set yourself free from the chains that bind you - it doesn't matter what other people think. If you lose a friend because your child is celebrating Halloween, better get it over with now, rather than spend years ducking the issue and lose the friend anyway when she finally finds out. Tell the truth and see what happens!

Gopher

Her father is an elder and I know this is a long shot- but what if she "reports" me? Is that even possible?

Does she know your full name and city and state? If not, there's nothing about which to worry.

If so, it would she'd still have to go to much effort to get you "in trouble" with the elders. If she did all that, she'd prove what kind of "friend" she isn't.

oompa

I personally think that freedom is a precious thing and leaving the JW was not achieved if you still have to hide. Let us know about the development.

I dont know how much freedom i can take if caused divorce and loss of even close family......what a pain....oompa

Younglove1999

So I took the advice from some here to just throw caution to the wind and be myself in my journal on another board where I'm friends with a JW from Canada.
Well, I posted a picture of my LO in her Happy Halloween outfit- and she saw it and said "huh, I thought you don't celebrate Halloween?"

So I posted this:

This year has been a year of big changes for us-

We used to not celebrate due to religious beliefs, but when we got pregnant and started analyzing our life, we realized that we didn't really "believe" anything, but were merely just doing what we were trained to do growing up. We analyzed whether or not we even wanted to go in the religious direction that we were trained to follow and if we wanted to train Gianna in that direction. It dawned on us that we really didn't want her to go in that direction. Actually, it's not that we dont want her to go in a religious direction, but more that we wanted her to feel like she could do anything she wanted to do and that we didn't want to limit her in any way. And since it's not the attitude that people in my religion have, we didn't feel like we could continue pursuing it since it is an "all or nothing" type religion.
There's a lot more to the story, and the above doesn't even beging to explain it, but basically we weren't practicing what we were preaching- didn't really care to, and thought it would be fake of us to pass it along to our daughter merely because it's expected us to, only to find out my daughter may reject it in the future anyways, which would put us in a predicament of deciding whether or not to shun her and we thought we would just bypass all that drama and just make the decision to cut it off altogether and teach my daughter that she has the right to explore her own ideas/beliefs and shape her own future and make friends with those of all backgrounds.
So if we're cutting off our religion, then no sense in not celebrating holidays and creating family traditions.

and in all honesty- we have never been happier-

I didn't want to get all into details like "the blood thing is BS" "generation" all that crap, but I'm anxious to see what her reaction is-

I was just so excited to not have to "hide" anymore in this facet that I wanted to share it with everyone-

So here's something crazy

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