Great thread, Thanks for starting it.
I was a Witness kid in the 1950's. I started first grade in 1950 in a one room country schoolhouse with water from a well and two outhouses out back. By the time I was in fifth or sixth grade, I was of an age of some understanding. The 1950's was a Witness age, in South Dakota at least, of high expectations of an imminent Armageddon. The idea of doom and gloom pleased my parents and the Witness people I grew up with.
As a Witness kid of a rigid Witness father and a pious Witness mother, I lived an outlined Witness life of meetings and/or service 5 days a week every week. I lived a life of impending doom. I believed all the Witnesses told me and I had no idea the Watch Tower Society was just a book publishing business drumming up book sellers and book sales. I expected Armageddon every night when I went to bed.
The meetings were really bad because the Witnesses taught my parents that God expected them to beat my brother and I and call it love. They read the verses where it is wrong to spare the rod and spoil the child. We suffered terribly because of the Witness people and because of the writers of the Witness literature. It was a congregation ritual in Sioux Falls, South Dakota to beat children and many there were beaten as bad or worse than my brother and I. At least my mother did most of her beating on us a home. Other kids at the hall were beaten right in front of us. I had PTSD for years as an adult because of it all.
By my middle elementary school years it had all taken a tole on me and I could see no point in even going to school, let alone doing good with studies. Thursday night I sat in the meeting for two and a half hours listening to predictions of the end of the world and the promised imminent death of all my classmates and my teacher and Friday in school I was tired and the last evening I had at home to do homework was Monday. The Witness writers, the Witness people, and my Witness parents did a good job at motivating me to be unmotivated in school. My teachers tried to encourage me to do my homework and do good in school but they could not undo the message I was getting at home and in my associating with the Witness people.
It was all a shame. I had a good intellect and I had abilities with music and art that could never be developed with support or approval. I could have been a happy, creative kid but it was robbed from me and I got fear and shaming and an unpaid book sales job instead. I gave up my wants and did what pleased my parents. I rebelled a couple times as an adolescent but I was told by my mother to either be a Witness and do all the meetings and service with the family or pack my bags and move out.
It was a tough life. I had no idea how tough until I got away from the group and had a chance to take an objective look at it all.
Many here have a similar story and more than a few are just beginning the recovery and it's a scary thing. Scary to think that all our Witness relatives, all our parents, our friends are all wrong about so much . . . . and the way we were treated now is a felony and children who are abused like we were are removed from those abusive homes.
That abuse and that living the life of the lie was our family secret and we didn't let our neighbors know we were praying for their speedy death or that dad didn't take that better job so he could be a better Witness and mom didn't have enough money to buy enough groceries some weeks because the grocery money was spent for gas for the car to go in service. They didn't know mom beat her kids with yardsticks and fly swatters and sent them to bed hungry every night. And every morning in school we sat during the pledge to the flag and the song of the nation and looked forward to going home that night for more of the same.
Now they shun us for not following in those footsteps. Just some reflections from GaryB
