Coming from a grossly dysfunctional family system, I found the WT religion attractive. They had all the answers to life's problems or so they claimed. I tried to be the best little JW ever and went by all the rules. This I thought would heal my shattered family life but it turned out that I was now part of the biggest dysfunctional family system ever. The WTS taught the very same dysfunctional things that I was trying to get away from in my family except that they added even more damning conditions. Denouncing ambition and material success, denouncing the enjoyment of everything on earth except overeating (which was something my family denounced).
I read all the books and magazines, attended all the meetings with three children in tow. I never seemed to get it right and struggled more and more to please. This tore at my self esteem and I stopped attending meetings a year after getting baptized. I realize now that the baptism was really the start of not being able to ask questions and being more like a zombie following along because I was afraid of losing my eternal life and the lives of my children. My mind began to challenge what I had been taught about good and evil and how I how I should be living my life.
I backed away and packed all the books and tapes but I couldn't throw them away. Still scared, still thinking that the WTS was God's chosen group. I made a few attempts at returning but couldn't get back into the schedule or the mind set. So I drifted, went to college, saw my children get through college, divorced my husband and was DA'ed.
Still the books, tapes and other WT propaganda were sitting in boxes, me too afraid to throw them away. What if I was to finally get my act together and live a pure life? I would need all of the WT stuff I had collected for 32 years. Huge amounts of boxes stored away.
It took my youngest son's return to the KH to look more deeply into the religion. Not just the surface looking at the so-called truth. Out came all the books once again lining my shelves and the tapes next to the stereo. I started attending meetings again to be with my son. I was amazed at how the people and the info were the very same as when I left many years before. I looked at the faces of the people and their children and how they were reacting to the info. I watched the children and how their parents were reacting to them. I watched the children being taken to the back of the hall for discipline. It made my stomach turn to see their pain and the dull eyes of the older children, and some with obvious fear of their parents and stuttering when made to answer questions from the Watchtower study.
I decided this was so wrong and that it was up to me to get my son away from this madness. I went on the internet and found this site. I read the COC book, printed out the UN business and other info and slowly passed the info on to my son. He stopped his study by giving the two men who came to see him a copy of the UN letter and asked them questions which they just passed off as apostate reasoning
We are out of the religion for good this time. Except I couldn't let go of the books right away. Now I am halfway through the throwing away of the WT info. I could not give them away being certain that someone would be entrapped by reading them. So I throw some away every week and they will rot in the garbage dump where they belong. Oh my God! Will I be punished for this? My first thoughts. But now I am feeling like weights are being taken away as they vanish along with the other garbage.
I now know how and why I allowed the WTS to get control of my mind. Looking for a better way to live and knowing that my family didn't know how to do that. Knowing that I was so hurt by my past that it became my opium to go towards the WTS. I didn't have to think about what was the right way to live my life, they told me and I sat back and said, "finally I found where I belong."
Now that I have been through months of self discovery, my mind is clear and I am finally free of the big WT lie. I am thankful that I will never again wonder if they are the only true religion and if God will kill me because I couldn't follow the life-sucking WTS. I am free to throw away 32 years of garbage.
Thanks be to this site for helping me to think for myself once again.