ICSA Pre-Conference Day
Montreal Canada
July 4-12 2012
The conference started a day early with a pre-conference workshop gearing towards helping us write our stories - Coming to Terms with Your Story: Writing to Heal. For years now I have been stuck at a certain spot in my autobiography. This workshop is exactly what I need.
More than that it has been amazing to listen to the stories of so many other people as they talk about the things they have experienced. We are more the same than we are different. I hear parts of my story in every voice I hear, see my world through their eyes.
So far I think I am the only ex-Witness here. I certainly haven’t run into anyone I know, either ex-Witness or still active.
One thing that I have found interesting is that many of the people who are here and, have never been to a conference before, never really stopped to think that JWs might also be a cult. “They look so normal”. But then looking around we all look so normal – just like any person you would meet on the street or next door.
Coming to Terms with Your Story: Writing to Heal .
There are many ways we can think about writing our story or begin to look at it in a certain way. No one way is better than another. Some people naturally organize their world to help them make sense of things. I am a list-maker so that seems to be what has worked best for me. But I got stuck. So thinking about my story in some other way might help me move forward.
Listing is one way (which I use for just about everything).
Clusters . Sometimes you have an idea and as you think of it a whole bunch of other ideas spin off from it. Sometimes more ideas come from those. The speaker gave us some examples, and let us try them. Clusters didn’t work for me at all.
Third way we can address our story – Free-Writng. That is the gold mine for me. I just allow words and thoughts to wander through my head. I often might have a starting point but I am never sure where it will go like I would with a list. But I can often sense the end as I write where I am going with it.
A fourth way of looking at your story is a fun game Truth or Consequences. In a way it could be seen as a spin off of Lists. You draw a line down the middle of the page and write Truth on one side and Consequences on the other.
Then list a topic you might write about and write it under the truth side. Then under the opposite side write down the consequence of writing about it. Sometimes one consequence might lead to another truth – or other consequences. But then we might think of consequences as only negative things. But I have found that sometimes the consequences are positive. So it would be interesting to find both the negatives and positives as well as the spin-off truths in your story.
We could start with a list of questions and find answers to them.
What was your leader like?
Were you misled and if so how?
What was promised? What didn’t they tell you?
You could attack the beliefs or your doubts, or your feelings about what happened to you while with the group.
What aspects of the group’s beliefs do I still think are correct?
Am I afraid to meet other people who are still in the group?
Do I think about going back? What triggers those thoughts?
One more method that I have used especially for the first 20 years of my life was a time line. They suggested years but I know many people have used where they lived, what school they were going to, or what congregation you were in especially if you were in more than one.
And that was just the workshop before the conference even began. There are a couple of conferences in the evening. One was for people who have never been to one of these conferences and one for professionals. Initially I thought I would go to the session for new people. When I asked they said it was really for people who were newly out of a cult not for someone who has been out for 27 years so I went to the session for professionals.
There is a lot more for me to share so keep reading.
