Greetings!
My first name is Mirian. I was born in the Bronx, NY in 1963. My parents are natives of Puerto Rico. My siblings and I were raised as Witnesses. I attended a spanish speaking congregation in the Parkchester area. My parents were very devout and zealous witnesses; very often they would pioneer during the spring and summer months, they volunteered for just about anything that was asked of them, including cooking meals at assemblies (in those days hot food was served), cleaning the kingdom hall, providing room and board for the traveling circuit overseer. My father was a very modest man, he lived very simply and worked just enough hours so as to not miss any meetings or field service. My mom worked occasionaly, usually as a teacher's aide or a school lunch helper. Ever since I was little, I had a deep interest in the medical field. I wanted to be a nurse. I saw how everyday the nurses would wait at the corner for the bus to come and pick them up and take them to work. I was so impressed by their nice, white uniforms and their name tags attached to their neat sweaters. I told my parents over and over again "I wanna be a nurse!" Needless to say my father discouraged such an idea; you see, 1975 was right around the corner, and anyone who was a witness around that time knew what that meant. My father told me over and over again that in the new order of things doctors and nurses would be a thing of the past, there would never be a need for that profession ever. So, I basically went through school not really wanting to excel at anything, I couldn't participate in school sports, plays, and when it came to the holidays, I stood out like a road flare. I had give the teacher a note from mom explaining why I couldn't participate, and sit way in the back of the school auditorium, just watching everyone else rehearse their lines for the christmas play. Around the 4th grade, my grades were really good, and the teacher wanted me to participate in a mathematics contest, but again, my father said no. When 1975 came, my congregation went nuts in preparation for the fall. People sold their properties, quit their jobs, spent crazy hours in field service, and some folks even moved into the kingdom hall. At the close of the year, nothing happened. I was perplexed. I kept asking questions, over and over again as to what happened, why didn't armageddon come, what's going to happen next. My father became very very irate when I asked these questions, sometimes he would even smack me across the face. It was because I asked so many questions that my father was not eligible to become an elder in the congregation; he was given this "not sprititually strong enough" run-around. As time went on and I became a teenager, I basically did what I wanted to do, I didn't care too much about being a witness, on the inside. Of course, around other witness kids and around adults I was the perfect little witness, I went out preaching on the weekends, on days off from school, and during the summer months. I got baptized when I was 13, basically, my mother forced me into it. My father got a little bit discouraged when he couldn't make "elder" so he spent some time not going to meetings or out on field service. He was quickly reprimanded by the other elders, and there were some nights that they came to our house and spent hours and hours there. My father "came to" soon enough, and he started attending meetings again. In my sophmore year of high school, I again expressed an interest in becoming a nurse, I even went to a local nursing school in my area and inquiried about attending there after graduation. When my father found out (and I dont know how he found out), I got the beating of MY LIFE. He said over and over again, "no further education after high school"! My mom's idea was for me to just get married to a bethelite and spend the rest of my days at bethel in Brooklyn. To further drive the point, on Thanksgiving day 1978 we all made the "pilgrimage" over to Brooklyn, where my mom introduced me to a very young bethelite girl. She was maybe 2-3 years older than me, and she had this HUGE wedding band and diamond ring on her left hand. I noticed how many young people were around, and me, being kind of cute, I got stares from young brothers all over the place. My father told me "see, this is where you need to be after you graduate high school, not some college or nursing school." I'll admit that for a while, I was pretty enthusiastic about going to bethel, not so much for serving God but so I can wear those HUGE rings like that girl was wearing! When I think about that now I can't help but laugh my head off. So again, time went on, I made a promise to my dad and to the elders of my congregation that I would NOT attend nursing school. Of course, I just could not keep that promise. I was so intent on going to nursing school, I so wanted to go to college that I did everything I could do to bring up my grades, secretly meet with my guidance counselor, and secretly take AP courses in school for college credit. I knew when the report cards were being mailed out, so I stood guard on my front porch for the mailman to come to make sure I got it before my parents did, and to make sure it was well hidden in my room. At the beginning of my senior year of HS, I started, again secretly, to fill and mail out college applications. I got accepted into NYU, City College, and St. John's U. I was elated! But how was I going to tell my parents? I prepared by getting a part-time job at a supermarket after school, so in case they kicked me out of the house, at least I had some money and I could rent a room. Of course they werent happy about the job, I often would miss the Wednesday night meetings, but I didn't care. A short time later, my father found out about my college apps (again I dont know who tipped him off) and he was FURIOUS! He called me a tramp, a liar, a child of the devil, and that I was to IMMEDIATELY rip up the apps and not attend the schools that accepted me. I SAID NO!!! He gave me this look that to this day sends chills up my spine. "What did you say?" he asked me. I said "I wont do what you are asking me to do." My mother and younger siblings braced themselves. My father simply broke down and cried. "How could you do this to me?" he sobbed over and over again. I cried too, and I felt so sorry for him. But I told him, "dad, I am not going to do what you want me to do. I want to live my own life. I don't see anything wrong with becoming a Nurse. Yes, the end of the system is right around the corner, but I need to make a living in the meantime you know." He just looked up at me and said I was too "materialistic" and that I would most likely be destroyed in Armageddon. When he said that he scared me but I also thought it was a cruel thing to say, and I dismissed it. A week later the elders came to my house, held a two hour meeting or some kind of commitee thing with some other elders from other congregations, and they threatened to disfellowship me if I were to go to college. I said go ahead. And they did. My parents quickly told me to abandon home, and that from now on, I was on my own. IT FELT GREAT! But the good feelings quickly subsided as I realized that all my goals would be that much more difficult to accomplish if I didn't have a roof over my head. So I called up my chemistry teacher, and, God bless her, she actually let me shack in with her until graduation. She was beyond annoyed at what my parents did, and she tried many times to talk to them, but it was no use. My graduation was so sad, no one from my family was there, just my classmates, and when the ceremony was over, I just sat on a bench and cried. I could no longer live with my teacher, so I moved into a studio apt. in this really really lousy area in the South Bronx. In the fall of 1981, I started attending BMCC for nursing studies. I did really well. I graduated and started working at Jacobi Hospital in 1984. To this day, I still work there, I am a pediatric RN and I am a director of a private resarch group for Latino AIDS patients; I'm basically in charge of grant writing. A couple of years back I met this older lady who works as a housekeeper at the hospital, we got to talking, and it turns out she is a Witness. I never told her about my background, she just talked to me every now and then and left me literature. I once remember actually leafing through a Watchtower magazine and there was a series of study articles dealing with "higher education." My eyes nearly popped out of my head. The Watchtower organization was now ENDORSING higher education!! I had a FIT! I contacted the lady who gave me these and inquiried about it, and she said that yes it was ok for youngsters to attend a 2 YEAR college for a short-term career prep. I asked her if this was always the stance of the organization, she said no, that when she was young it was forbidden. So I asked her isn't it kind of weird that this organization would make such a drastic change like that, knowing how it could seriously impact someone's life. She just shrugged her shoulders and said that there must be "a higher purpose" for such matters, and that she must "wait on Jehovah", for the "light gets brighter and brighter." I thought to myself, "what a crock of sh---". I actually wanted to, somehow, pursue legal action against the Watchtower Society for making go thru all that drama some 15 years earlier. I asked this lady about some other changes in the doctrine, she informed me that organ transplants were ok, and that children were no longer discouraged from participating in after-school programs, so long it had nothing to do with holidays. I was livid. I told her my whole story, from the time that I was little to 1975 to after high school and this present day. She just gave me this glazed-over look and said that "the organization is run by imperfect men" and that 1975 was all in our heads, that no one acutually predicted anything. I nearly BEAT this lady down and told her that everything I told her was true, that SHE had problems if she believed that 1975 was a fake. Needless to say, she never spoke to me again, to this day she avoids me like the plague. In 1994 my father passed; the congregation held a wake and funeral WITHOUT ever telling me about it, my brother had told me about it (BTW he was also disfellowshipped in 1989 for "apostasy"). A couple of years later I learned that the "1914 generation" teachings were also revised, and I knew, right away, that I made the right choice by not giving the Watchtower Society any say in how I run my life. My mother and sister are still in it; my sister ended up marrying a bethelite and she spends her days happily mopping up floors and scrubbing toilets in Brooklyn, that's ok by me. My mom lives alone in a Senior Citizen low-income housing project; my dad never thought about saving for retirement or buying a home to live in. I visit my mom frequently and beg her to come stay with me at my house with my two daughters, but she refuses, she would rather have an $11 an hour home health aide take care of her before I can take care of her. I hope someday soon she changes her mind. Anyway, Im so sorry that all this went on as long as it has, and if you made it this far without yawning, thanks!