Congrats, and thank you Simon!
Happy 12th birthday to JWD / JWN (us !)
by Simon 76 Replies latest forum announcements
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DaCheech
8 years here (next month), and no one outed me yet!!! hurray
anyway, thanks.............back then I really needed this place (kept me sane)
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Thor
Happy Birthday to this site!
Glad that your here!!
BTW How many members are there? Just curious, seems incredible to me how many people have been touched by the WBTS.
Thank you!!
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aligot ripounsous
12 years during which JWs who had previously been starved of free speech and had had their awareness impaired by mental self sensorship have been offered the possibility to express what they really thought and found that many others were in the same craving. Thanks a lot, Simon and Angharad for having been instrumental to many regaining their freedom.
And cheerful greetings to Mouthy !
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Dagney
Thank you Thank you Thank you Simon, Ang and mods for JWD/JWN!!! I appreciate this place so much. After losing almost everybody and everything we've ever known, to have a place to come to find others who are going through the same thing means everything.
Happy Birthday JWN!
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Terry
The cream rises to the top and Simon is the cherry!
What this forum amounts to is a giant cross onto which the Watchtower Society is nailed and suffers the pangs of hell.
Each of us has our turn at poking at its side with our spear.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY JWN!
This is my 12,627th post, so I must feel at home here!
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AndersonsInfo
I remember like it was yesterday. It was 1999 and for over a year I had not attended meetings but had not disassociated myself from the organization. During that time, behind the scenes, I contacted Alan Feuerbacher, a friend from the past. (Remember him ole-timers?) Alan had successfully faded from the organization when I contacted him and became a great support to me at that time, especially since my husband, Joe, was still an elder and all my family except my father, and all my friends were Witnesses.
Joe and I had been out of Bethel for seven years in 1999 and I stopped doing outside research for the Writing Dept. at the end of 1996. I was utterly alone with my anti-JW beliefs running around in my head because everyone I knew were JWs and I couldn't tell them what I knew. It was an incredibly unhappy time in my life. I was smiling on the outside and crying on the inside.
Alan was shocked when I told him I was no longer a supporter of the Witness religion. After many lengthy phone discussions, Alan told me about the discussion board, H20, where many former JWs posted (and also very effectively argued with JWs).
Then Alan introduced me to many former JWs, activists like he was, and I began to have a community again to associate with although mainly through phone conversations. I loved reading the posts on H20. Very few people knew I was out there lurking as I remained silent. It was such a relief though to have a place to use as a support mechanism like H20 when there was no one to talk to about my disbelief in the WT religion.
And then H20 was gone from the Internet, and like the many who posted on that discussion board, I worried about a future without this type of outlet for those leaving the organization. So you can imagine what a relief it was when Simon and his wife, Angharad, started JWD (now JWN). If I remember, at that time, Simon and Angharad were still JWs, but in time, many fabulous discussions and arguments on JWD convinced them to completely disengage themselves from the Witnesses, and, I might add, at great personal cost.
It was through JWD that I met Bill Bowen (Silentlambs - and that's quite another story) and by 2002 I was on NBC's Dateline talking about the hidden problem of child sexual abuse within the Watch Tower organization. JWD was the springboard that we used to advertise that Dateline was going to do a program on JWs and the sexual abuse problem and the excitement was shared by thousands through JWD that at long last, the public was going to learn about this problem.
From the very beginning of my journey of expose', Simon and Angharad were there for me letting me use their discussion board to share information about this or that discovery. It was a happy time a few years after Dateline when the Greens came from England to Florida where I met them and many other XJWs who posted on JWD at the home of some former JWs who opened up their house to us all.
In 2007, it was through JWD that the Greens supported my efforts to expose the secret Watch Tower settlements of nine lawsuits with sixteen victims of child abuse. They had a banner placed at the top JWD that pointed people to my, at that time, new website, www.watchtowerdocuments.com where I discussed the settlements and pointed out how people could obtain the court documents. If it wasn't for JWD, I believe that I and others could have never reached as wide an audience like we had and still have as we continue to make the truth known about the harmful practices and policies of the Watch Tower religion.
So, Simon and Angharad, Happy 12th Birthday!!!! And thank you from the bottom of my heart for being there to keep this wonderful discussion board available to me and tens of thousands of others (maybe hundreds of thousands?) that have a need for this wonderful medium to help make our journey out of JWs a success.
Much love,
Barbara
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Marvin Shilmer
Howdy, Simon and Angharad!!!
Happy birthday to JWN!!!
Now for my long speech... What Barb said times at least 2!
Marvin Shilmer
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aligot ripounsous
Barbara mentioning Alan F is a very good thing because Alan has brought a tremendous lot to the freeing process of many a JW, whether when he was still posting on JWD or through the archives. His thorough and rational analysis was giving weight to the site, many thanks to him too.
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mouthy
AlligotThanks sweetie