disfellowshipping and suicide

LyinEyes

My mother had been a faithful witness for 16 yrs, she got addicted to prescription drugs and things got very bad for her. She overdosed one nite and was put in rehab. She began smoking after rehab and was disfellowhipped for it, she got a letter in the mail . I dont recall the elders or anyone , trying to help her in her time of need. Not over the drug abuse or to see if she needed help with her mental health. A few months after she was disfellowshipped , she jumped to her death and drowned. I know she was ate up with guilt at what her life had become , she was only 35 and suffered from depression and our home life was full of secrets and hypocrisey. How sad I feel to hear about the Bryant's tragedy. How many more people will choose to end thier lives than feel the pain of what they see as no way out. I feel strongly on telling this story so as to see how many people out there are suffering after being disfellowshipped. How can we help them to not end their lives? I left the borg less than a year ago, and without this internet info, I might have been a sad statistic too.
You can not isolate yourself and it is wrong to be shunned , those who shun others in such a way , have blood on their hands.

Elsewhere

Keep asking, I'm sure there are plenty of stories just waiting to be told.

I had to choose between disappointing my family, friends, and being shunned... or suicide. It was difficult, but I chose to live for myself instead of them. I DAed myself.

"As every one knows, there are mistakes in the Bible" - The Watchtower, April 15, 1928, p. 126
Believe in yourself, not mythology.
<x ><

flower

nothing angers me more about the org than the disfellowshipping thing. i can deal with the children growing up with no friends or hapiness, i can handle the wasted lives preaching the bullshit but when they throw someone out in the world with nothing or noone to help them i cant stand that..it makes me so mad.

i agree with you..thank god for the internet. it gives those who have been disfellowshiped somewhere to turn. thats why its so important to keep the truth as the main focus of the sites and keep the fluff as a secondary thing.

flower

anewperson

LyinEyes, which state or province was this in? You can privately email me at [email protected], or if you wish to say nothing further then we understand that too. A memorial website will be going up in memory of those who suicided and were JWs or Watchtower-impacted and to inform and deter others from becoming endangered by WTS doings.

Scully

LyinEyes:

I'm so sorry for what your mother went through, and your family in the aftermath of her untimely death.

I agree that the WTS bears part of the blame for hers and other deaths as a result of their shunning of people.

The damage, emotionally and psychologically, that this behaviour causes is frightening. They tell you 'not to isolate yourself' on the one hand, and on the other hand they're pretending they don't see you and think of you as "dead". How can a person who is experiencing mental illness like depression dig their way out of the pit of despair when the ONLY "friends" and support network they've ever HAD refuses to affirm their existence? refuses to even acknowledge their entitlement to human respect and dignity?

"By their fruits you will know them" - Matthew 7:20

"By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love among yourselves" - John 13:35

They don't save their shunning behaviour for just the baddest of the bad either. I was never DFd or DAd, and have never been advised of any charges of wrongdoing against me, or invited to attend any meetings of a Judicial Committee for investigation. Yet, if a JW sees me in public, I get shunned. I don't smoke, I don't drink, I don't commit adultery. I guess not going door to door or attending meetings anymore is considered a "sin" now. But you know what? During the time when things were going lousy for us - I was first on bedrest for a month because of a threatened miscarriage, then after the baby came incapacitated with depression and anxiety attacks, my husband lost his job, my 3 kids got chicken pox one after the other (9 weeks of missed meetings because someone was always contagious), a back injury followed by a car accident and neck injury - NOT ONE of "the friends" even lifted a finger to encourage us. Nobody called. Nobody visited. Nobody gave a flying f*ck. And then when we get on with our lives without them, they have the AUDACITY, the GAUL, to say that we "turned our back on The Truth™". They have the BALLS to say that it wasn't anything they DID that caused US to leave THEM. In a way, they're right - they didn't DO anything. But in DOING NOTHING, they didn't make us want to stick around either. They were just like the Pharisees who taught "what you do not want others to do to you, do not do to them". That's not the "Christian" Golden Rule though. "Whatever you want men to do to you, you must do to them". And believe it or not, we found people who, like us, lived by THOSE words. Those people were Catholics. They were Protestants. Some were Pentecostals. Some were Jewish. But each one of them proved to be more Christian than all the JWs we knew put together.

That year of torture proved to me beyond the shadow of a doubt, that JWs are just like the Pharisees that Jesus condemned.

And if it weren't for those kind, good folks who showed us human compassion and dignity, I probably would not be alive today.

Love, Scully

UADNA-C (Unseen Apostate Directorate of North America-Canada)

Tinkerbell4125

I'm so sorry to hear about your mother. My father took his life also. He put a gun to his head. My sister-in-law's brother shot himself in the head also after he learned he would be disfellowedshipped. My father was treated like dirt by the j.w.'s. His own children treated him like it was a effort and a anoance to even speak to him. Even though my father never was a j.w., they treated him like he should know better! He was very depressed and like your mother, it became to be too much for him. I will never be the same.

dungbeetle

As was stated in both William Schnells' book '30 Years a Wathtower Slave' and Barbara Grizutti Harrison's book 'Visions of Glory'; there is no place for Jehovah's Witnesses in terrible trouble to go.

Thank God for Simon's site. JW's, non-JW's, and ex-JW's can all come HERE for help.

(((((((((((((Angharad and Mr. Angharad)))))))))))))

JAVA

Topics like this can go on forever because Watchtower induced tragedies are endless. A woman in our KH killed herself after being disfellowshipped. She pioneered off and on for many years, but suffered from depression. A few months before the suicide her son was involved in an auto accident. A young JW passenger (his girlfriend) was killed when they were hit by a drunk driver. I think her son's accident pushed her into deeper depression, and she started smoking. The Watchtower and elders were nowhere to be found when she needed help, but as soon as she lit a cigarette, they were only too willing to help by shunning her.

She started the car in a closed garage, had the windows down, and a Watchtower green Bible was found beside her. I'm sure we could fill a book with tragedies helped along by life in the Watchtower fairy tale. Without thinking about it very long, I know 3 others that committed suicide while under the Tower's spell. They were all part of "God's happy people."

avengers

the WTS bears part of the blame for hers and other deaths

I say all of it.!

Scully

Dear avengers:

the WTS bears part of the blame for hers and other deaths
I say all of it.!

The problem is, even if the WTS is TOTALLY to blame for any/all of these deaths, they can't even bring themselves to admit that they have the teeniest-tiniest responsibility. They consider themselves to be above reproach. Furthermore, they don't give a flip. Look at the way they refuse to hold a memorial service for the family. How cold, how callous, how "christian" is that?

The GB/WTS/JWs care only about ONE thing: pushing books down people's throats and sending the profits to the False Prophets in Brooklyn NY. If you don't keep up with them, they toss you on the garbage pile and forget about you, like you never existed.

It's cut-throat in that pack of wolves, a dog-eat-dog rat-race. I'm so glad I'm not part of it anymore.

Love, Scully

disfellowshipping and suicide

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