Me too Jen. My mother basically is a very unhappy person, a victim of child abuse herself, and although she was afraid to hit us most of the time during her constant rages, she was always emotionally abusive and highly manipulative and still is.
My dad openly says to everyone that "B_____ put the Bible on a the end of a whip and made us all become Witnesses." She believed that it'd fix everything wrong with her and us and the world if we converted to being Witnesses. She pounded that into us, too, and my brother rebelled and left home at 17, and faded out. He's back in again, nominally, again to make Mom happy, but he rarely attends meetings or does FS. Just to keep the peace, he jumped through their hoops and got reinstated.
I remember when she first studied, she'd lock herself up in her room with stacks of WTS books and magazines and pour over them obsessively for hours, not getting out of bed, and not eating, not sleeping...mentally unbalanced obsessive behavior, but as a child, I assumed everyone's mother was like mine, i knew no better. The Witnesses actually praised her for this, telling her she was "aglow with the spirit" and "Jehovah was blessing her studying and praying day and night". She's a victim of religious obsession, or religiousity, she does everything obsessively.
My mother has OCD and she hoards things and she is chronically anxious and depressed. She did the same thing with becoming a Witness as she did with everything else in her life, made it a slave to her mental illness, which enslaves her.
But, my brother and I both felt compelled to get baptized out of the incessant pressure to please her. We never knew anything else but pleasing her, and my father does most things just to keep her "happy" which she isn't anyway.
My brother always jokes that if we had a family crest, the motto would be "Don't upset MOM!"
