OPEN MIND: If you have any "privileges" consider hanging in there for even a brief time, (a few weeks?) in order to use your "safe & mature" status for seed planting purposes on those you care about the most.
Once privileges are gone and you know the truth about the truth, even I can't imagine kissing enough butt to try getting them back.
OM and I have never met because he is still fully immersed in meetings and JW stuff while not believing. When he finally gets out, we have to meet at a cafe or coffee shop somewhere here or there or inbetween. Anyway, we are great friends considering we never met, but we are totally opposite in some of our thinking. I resigned as an elder before I even started the fade.
A few weeks is a short time, but hanging in there to help others? Nah. Free yourself and try to help your loved ones. Screw helping little old ladies and other elders and pioneers and your buddies. I mean, sure- if they will listen, say something. But planting seeds is for those you can actually help, your family. You need much exposure time to people to really get through to them and fading is about spending less time exposed to that crap. The best way to help your friends in the hall is to move toward the door and have them ask "Whazzup?"
Once privileges are gone, it is an incredible burden off your own back and the personal freedom it gives is worth ten thousand times what "appreciation" the pioneers and elders will show you for planting seeds of doubt about WTS. Plus, it shows your loved ones, especially children, that you won't compromise your principles for your position.
Stilla: do so slowly - still answer up at meetings and when giving answers make sure that you say how wonderful the organization is etc - give absolutely no hints on apostasy at all
That works for some, but don't be afraid to be quicker about it. I say the first thing to go is those comments. Silence at the few meetings you do attend is part of fading in my opinion. Even when you are there, nobody notices you. If you keep commenting at the few meetings, they know when you are absent.
Everyone is different and has different family dynamics. If you and a spouse, or just you, have nobody else in the religion and want to leave, just leave. If, like most of us, you have family in, you may not be able to leave peacefully without alerting them. Leave anyway, but a bit slower. Don't let something make you afraid to start fading. Afterward, you will say you should have done it sooner and quicker.
I have a wife and a mother still in. Yet I resigned as an elder in August, stopped turning in field circus reports by Oct., and totally stopped attending meetings by the next Memorial. That may be lightning fast for some of you, but push on. Make some progress. It's for your personal freedom first.
