Welcome “sickandtired,”
We're so happy to have you posting on JWN. The beginning of my story is very similar to WalkTall, Amnesiano, Janet B and yours. Like all of you, my husband and I were serving whole-soul as JWs for decades. When I made up my mind to leave the organization after 43 years, I was dying inside and even if it meant dying at Armageddon (which I still believed was going to happen), losing my husband and family, and all my friends from around the world, I couldn't continue living a lie. For eight years I suffered in silence, smiling on the outside and crying on the inside.
Where my story is different from most is that my husband was in Bethel two different times, a Bethel elder, and an appointed servant for most of his life since he was 18 years old, and most of the time he presided. He was in full-time service for 25 years and while in Brooklyn was assembly overseer. He humbly lived and breathed being used by the WTS for 50 years. My story is on Freeminds.org, but I've never told about the emotional upheaval I went through when I slowly discovered that the religion I was with for 43 years was a total fraud. I couldn't figure how to get out of it and still have my family, my son, and most of all, leave with my marriage intact.
Leaving Bethel in 1993, after nearly 11 years, the meetings were torture for me to go to and I would go home literally physically sick. As a researcher for the Watch Tower, I came to know that so much that elders were instructed to say during the meetings was simply baloney.
In addition, I learned about the child abuse mess when I was in Bethel's Writing Department and no one in my personal world, other than my husband, knew anything about it. I've never before told how I was in fear of losing my life while at Bethel because the molestation stories that I heard from victims of child abuse were so frightening. Of course, when I look back now, I know that I wouldn't have been harmed by anyone, but at that time I just didn't know who was good or who was evil and my world was turned upside down.
Those were terrible days for me. I still believed that JWs were teaching Bible "truth" but that Satan had infiltrated the organization. That's what I was told by some senior writers. When I left Bethel, I still worked for the Writing Department for four more years doing research at home, and in that time discovered more and more things that upset me no end and I could tell no one. Many things happened to me that I won’t go into here as the revelations during 1996 through 1998 made it so difficult for me to have any joy at all. I was in contact with some Writing Dept. staff weekly and the information was so discouraging. Finally, one Sunday morning in early 1998, I couldn't stand living like I had been emotionally for one more day, and I told my husband that I'd had enough and would never have anything to do with the organization again. He respected me enough to respect my decision and so did my Witness mother and sister-in-law, although I lost our son and his family, and eventually, so did he.
Slowly I put together my life without all the other people I had loved and associated with even though I was not yet disfellowshipped. I went to college for two years on scholarship, took a part-time job, and started to secretly connect up with former JWs, many well-known to those on the board and told them my story. My husband remained a JW for four more years after I left and never in a million years did I think that he would leave what I came to call the "ole' boys club." We had some bad days, but he never gave a thought to leaving me. He told me after he left the organization that we had too many wonderful personal memories together and leaving was out of the question for him. But he did leave the Witnesses. My exit from the organization and the subsequent upheaval in our lives caused him to start to think deeply about everything that we called "truth." He finally left on his own volition and the rest is history! However, leaving WT was not easy, but it was worth all the sacrifice and loss.
We women who have posted on this thread can identify with you “sickandtired” because we suffered the same personal anguish that you are going through now, even though some circumstances were different. Don't give in; fight for your freedom and for your children's freedom. Doing so will bring so much future personal satisfaction and happiness. Life is an adventure and if you keep that hunger for real righteousness that you have now, you'll find it. The life we had as WT puppets was pure fantasy. Now we live with reality and it's not at all like what WT writers have convinced seven million good people that life outside of their constantly-changing religion is like.
We are with you in spirit and with tears in our eyes and an ache in our hearts for you and all like you who are enduring such emotional pain as you long to be free of Watch Tower’s oppression and lies. At this moment you may think that you are not oppressed, but when you taste of real freedom, you’ll understand!
Barbara Anderson
