Feelings of loss and despair and of being "cast adrift" were more the result of the conflict going on in my conscience. What I was reading in the publications about how "true Christians" were supposed to behave with each other and the things I was seeing with my own eyes from people who called themselves my "brothers" and "sisters" were in stark contrast, and left me filled with doubts about the organization.
My first step was to write down a list of what I was seeing, and I kept a journal for well over a year. At the same time, I was referencing scriptures to either support or discredit my perceptions. I was actually surprised that the scriptures supported my viewpoint rather than discredited it.
I was also auditing a university course in Social Psychology and the professor presented some fascinating work on the topic of Cognitive Dissonance. I finally had a "label" for what I was feeling. The more I looked into SocPsy, the more information I learned about Control Techniques, and could pick them out of WT literature. It was like being the little kid in the story...... I was seeing the Emperor without any clothes on, and I wasn't going to pretend anymore.
I found that reading CofC was a confirmation of everything that I had already suspected about the WTS, and much much more than I ever expected to learn. Yes it made me angry to learn that black JWs in Malawi were sacrificed for the "cult", while Mexican JWs were given permission to "compromise" in order to further the 'preaching work'.
The question my JW friends and family would ask "But where else are you going to go?" and I would answer "I don't need to go anywhere. I don't need all the answers written down for me in black and white. I don't need the reward of living in a paradise with JWs to encourage me to be a good person. I have the capacity of free-will, and I'm going to live my life, instead of 'waiting on Jehovah' while time slips away."
I'm grateful for the information that Ray Franz shared with the world about the WTS. It confirmed for me what I already knew in my heart.
I think each and every person who leaves the WTS goes through a kind of grieving process. It's basically the realization that you've been hoodwinked and recruited into the world's largest unpaid sales force of pseudo-religious literature, and that there is no Armageddon around the corner, no Paradise on earth for 1000 years, no resurrection of Grandma and Grandpa or other loved ones to the Paradise. It's the unravelling of your world view like a kite that's taken off in the wind. But for me, reading CofC allowed me to see that having doubts and questioning authority were not evil, and that I was certainly not the first, nor would I be the last to do so. The fact that we are all here is a testament to that as well.
Love, Scully
It is not persecution for an informed person to expose a certain religion as being false. - WT 11/15/63
