Welcome and hello!
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by catherinedrew 23 Replies latest jw friends
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Lozhasleft
Hello and welcome Catherine...its never too late to get rid of the painful stuff inside you and this forum is a great place to do it. I look forward to hearing more from you.
Loz x
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nelly136
welcome
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GrandmaJones
Welcome, everyone here will be friendly,
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3Mozzies
Welcome
Look forward to your future posts :)
3Mozzies
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Gayle
Awesome, Catherine, saving your 5 children from potential slavery of the WTS. I have had 5 children also, got them busy in sports, school activities, teaching normal thinking ability along the way, encouraging college. They are grown now, none baptized, all have graduated college. I found myself nose-deep in WT murky waters, bobbing up and down for breath for so long and realized I could not put my children through that. Thankfully, my children know freedom of mind and life and they thank me frequently.
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drewcoul
Welcome Catherine!!!! You'll find many of us in a similar situation as you. That's what I like about this forum. I often wonder if I have ran into some of these people through the years at a DC or CA as we were growing up.
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Ding
Welcome, Catherine!
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ReallyTrulyAthena
Hi and welcome, Catherine My Dad and sis are still in, too. I can identify with a bit of your story - my father and I have spoken/seen each other only a handful of times in the past two decades since my DF'ing.
I'm glad I joined this community in order to share, learn and further the healing process; I hope you find the same.
Looking forward to hearing more of your story...
RTA
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catherinedrew
Nice to read all the welcomes. thanks. Yeah, this upbringing is one that i find, never leaves me. It the "gift that keeps on giving"...Haha. My kids know I was bought up a jw all though they (thankfully) dont understand what it actually means. They cant quite believe I didnt do birthdays christmas etc. Its out of their realm of 'knowing'. yay.
When young, i thought i would stay a jw 'forever', couldnt wait to pat a lion etc...in fact, my mother used to do huge paintings of kids patting lions and animals and blue sky (u knowthe vision) and have them on our walls. I remember vividly the year books with photos of tortured women in Malawi,so it must have been the early 70's. One pic, specifically, was a woman sitting down bare breasted, with breast burnt off. The paragraph spoke of different kinds of torture. good reading for seven year olds. I remember family discussions on what we would do when it was our turn to be persecuted, tortured. (Yeah, it was a 'given'. OUr toenails were going to pulled out of our little child feet...it's all about being loyal to god. It was a given that our parents were going to be ripped away..etc..really beleived it) God! I so wanted to be 'good'. Im pretty sure other older peeps would remember the paradise regained (or lost and regained?) book. a sort of peachy colored, raised cover picture depicting 'bad' people falling into crevasses that had opened up in the earth. Open the book and it's full of pictures of skyscrapers toppling, fire, cars and people once again falling into the opened up earth, children as well. I think this book was aimed at us kids. we certainly read it. The books and meetings and wittnessing certainly kept me in line while I was young. I remember my sister and I knocking on the door of our first house together. By ourselves. I was 8 and she was 9. The mags were 5cents each. I remember not being able to sing christmas songs at school assemblys, or the national anthem. (I used to mouth the words). I remember having to go outside or to the library during religous instruction, outside when someone had birthday cake.
I really really wanted to join the brownies when I was 8.I wanted the uniform, the badges..i guess the comraderie. Nope, not for me. (only the wittness uniform.) Basically, i remember feeling like an outcast, all though i didnt have that language as a kid. It just felt bad. I didnt belong. I didnt have friends, (unfortunately, they were all going to die 'shortly). I remember 1975. Good friends of my parents, actually the elder that introduced them to the org, left. He left his wife and kid and lived his life. (he was actually a cool man, my mother ended up marrying him...yes..A WHOLE OTHER STORY). anyhow, i do remember a lot of whispering among the adults around that time. I will stop at this point, I have just read through and it sounds like a big whinge, Im not sure, why after all these years I am doing this. I think it's unfinished buisiness. Please bare with me!I have been really busy since leaving 'it', getting a degree, babies, life. My youngest only started school a few months ago. I am only just getting time to think. (?????)
thnks for listening.