"How much I have grown", that phrase had real resonance with me Joe, I feel that since leaving and discovering sites such as this I have really grown as a person.
I was stuck in longer than you ! But it occurs to me that the WT really kept us intellectual and moral infants. We knew next to nothing, and they made the moral decisions for us.
Oh yes, we have grown O.K, in to real, rational, thinking Adults, who make up their own mind on all things.
And, finally, I feel the real me is here, I am happy and comfortable with who, and what, I am.
In all my nearly sixty years in that dreadful prison of the mind that is the WT/JW "religion", I never felt happy with who, and what, I was, in fact I was never really happy.
True happiness lies outside of the WT.