Dear Leaving:
Welcome to the half-way house, a wonderful place to stop on your spiritual journey. I stopped by here four years ago when I was an elder and conducting the WT study every Sunday. My immediate family was "in," including wife and grown childen. We were among the "prominent" folks in the congregation. But we had harbored nagging doubts for many years, based on the things we had seen and experienced in what we had always thought of as the one true religion.
It was lack of real love and the rush to judgment that pervades the Society's thinking that finally got to us. We're all "put" now, happy as can be, loving our freedom. None of us has become a drug addict, promiscuous slut, or lost their job. There is life after the Watchtower!
You quoted your mother as thinking the "the new WT" was a gift from the Society to show how close we were to the end. And yet the reality is the new WT is a cost-cutting move to offset the huge losses in donations they've encountered in recent years, especially since they went to the "voluntary" donation arrangement a decade or so ago. And they reason they did that was to protect their resources after the government went after Jimmy Swaggart Ministries in a case that scared the WT Society into thinking their suggested contributions would begin to be taxed as revenue. Of course, none of us were told that. It was "simplication," evidence of divine direction, and so on. If it was divine direction, one might ask, why did contributions drop off the cliff after the new arrangement was put into play? All of which has led to massive cutbacks in the production of books and magazines (where are the hardback books? where are the multiple new releases at the district convention?).
These are the kinds of questions you will learn to ask here, and find answers to. And you are free to do so, which is the greatest gift of all.
Much love on your journey.