blindnomore, I'm glad you and your daughter are still close. Thanks for the PM. Did you see my reply?
flipper, As always, thanks for the encouraging words. I think of you and your situation often as there are many parallels. I've read both of Hassan's first two books and they have helped me both to better understand the situation and to develop a strategy for healing myself and possibly reaching my kids.
The attempts I do make to reach out to them are carefully designed to reach that authentic personality that you mentioned. But it's hard because, as you commented, it is repressed by their JW cult personality. Since both of them are "born-ins" they never have had the opportunity to know their true, authentic self. It is only there in embryonic form.
I think of how difficult it was for me to recover my authentic self after leaving the organization (I was 24 when I was baptized) and I realize that I have an uphill battle winning the hearts and minds of my sons. Still, I won't give up. It's just so hard dealing with it.
I'm home today. If you can talk, I'd love it.
hemp lover, Wow, sorry to make you cry. But I do appreciate your positive thoughts. The support of you and everyone else here is really something amazing. It really gives lie to the WT claims of what so-called "apostates" are like and exposes their fake Christianity.
Glad you were able to get your family out in one piece. I'm jealous, but in a good way!
jwfacts, Yes, I do hope he had a mixture of happiness that I remembered even if he sent it back. Of course I don't know how he is feeling or what he is thinking, but I can guess. Actually, he didn't even open the box so he would be guessing what was in it. That might even be better, it might get him thinking more.
Your advice to avoid anything doctrinal or critical about the religion is of course sound and well-taken. This is why all my efforts to make contact are completely non-religious and are simply typical of what would be normal between a dad and his son.
It reminds me of a dating tip I read once to speed things up in a relationship: Treat a woman as if you are already boyfriend-girlfriend. The context wasn't suggesting that you do anything inappropriate, just that a confident man can take some positive control in a relationship by behaving as if things were already as he wanted them to be; acting as if the future were here now, rather than waiting for some invisible clues that might never come.
My spin on this in this situation is to simply try to treat my sons as much as possible as if we already have a normal relationship post-divorce. I am NOT acting as if nothing bad, painful or difficult for them has happened. I've done everything possible to acknowledge and address that. What I AM doing is acting as if we are now past that and ready to move on to the next stage, but always remaining cognizant that I am taking a lead that they are not ready to follow. It's a theory.
Nevertheless, I also realize that in anything I do there is the implicit criticism of WT policies by the very fact that I am basically ignoring their mandate to not contact my own sons. Still, I believe turning-up the volume periodically on the Cognitive Dissonance is important to do. That is my plan: push a little, back-off. Push a little, back-off. Lather, rinse, repeat.
sizemik, I don't know if you remember, but when I first began posting here a little more than a year ago, you were one of the first JWN members to show me compassion, understanding and support. I really appreciated it then and still do now. I'm so glad you got your kids out before they were baptized.
My oldest was baptized before I left and their mother somehow got my youngest baptized within months after my leaving. (I don't know how she did that, he was not exactly on track to get baptized when I left. She probably used my DFing to manipulate and pressure him.)
Your comments on feeding the CD are right on. See what I wrote to jwfacts above.
BTW, I miss Ritchie.
00DAD
