Does anyone know how & where I can post a MS Word document which is the letter I have written to my family? I finally got the guts (yes an Aussie) up to send it! After several drafts, I am finally happy with the copy I have now written. I will post it here if you're interested to read it. And secondly, I keep trying to check my Inbox as it says I have '1 new message' but when I click on it nothing comes up? it's really bugging me grrrr that there is this apparent message that I cannot read!!
Anyway here's the letter I've written, all the copies are printed off, alls that's left to be done is the long walk to the post box:-)
Dear Mum, T(eldest sister) and A(older sister) (cc: L (cousin & friend, also excom),
I?ve wanted to send you this letter for many months now, although after several drafts I have hesitated, concerned that I might regret having been so open and honest with you. Knowing that once the words have been put out there, they cannot be taken back. I am ready now though to take that chance.
I should warn you that parts of what I have to say have been written most candidly, so I am sorry if reading it causes you discomfort or pain. I cannot force you to read what I want you to hear, but I hope in fairness to me you will try. I believe on many occasions I have listened to, and respected each of your opinions and perspectives. It is not my intention to secure your sympathy, as I have come to despise the knowledge that you look upon me sympathetically, with no good cause. My hope is only to shed for you some light on my thought processes, to share with you some conclusions I have reached, and to put out in the open what has not been said.
I believe each of you knows the extent of my love for you, and that I have only ever wanted the very best of happiness for you. This is despite the fact that you have not always reciprocated the same desires for me. Your love and approval once meant the world to me, so much so that I chose to repress many of my inner feelings and thoughts, out of fear of jeopardising that arrangement. I came to the conclusion that the conditions you put on your love for me came at too great a cost to me. I also came to realise that who I am as a person is the essence of whom I have always been. It was an intensely painful reality to accept that even though there was the appearance of acceptance of me for many years, underneath it I have always known that you would never approve of the secret person I had to repress to sustain your love for me. I want to clarify once and possibly for all time, that I do not share the same beliefs and ideals you do, and have not for some time. What you believe in terms of your faith is in some matters in direct contrast to how I see them. The fundamental difference between you and I is that I choose to accept our differences and respect that each of us has the right to uniqueness.
For a long time I believe you may have judged some of my decisions as poor choices, a consequence of having ?lost my way?, as a result of having left the faith. I came to realise that some of my most successful learning curves and growing experiences were spawn from what seemed at the time to be questionable choices. I can in full honesty tell you I have absolutely no regrets; I take ownership of my life?s choices and make apologies to no one for them. I cannot deny that there have been some very dark moments, which are not so much the result of having left behind an unsustainable belief system, but rather the result of a severe lack of unconditional love, honest support, as well as having to deal with the effects of extreme dejection. It was these painful experiences, and the knowledge that as I became an adult that confronting them would be inevitable, that led me to periods of intense confusion and frustration. I think it is an unnecessary tragedy that has forced us apart, the further away I remove myself from the situation and see real pain in the world, the pettier I see our differences to be. It is madness to me to think that you are grieving for me as though I were dead, when the whole time I am living a conservative happy, and optimistic life! I have mental freedom now that once I would have never deemed possible, every day I am more and more grateful for the beautiful life I have. The greatest tragedy is that you don?t know the person I have become, this I believe is a great loss for both of us. Although I respect that your faith works for you, it does not do the same for me, and never has.
For a long time I was guilted into believing the blame lay with me for the deterioration of our relationships. I am well aware now that there are no real ideals in life; that we will always be required to make what seem at the time cruel choices. I could argue that prior to adulthood I had no control of the terms that dictated our relationship, therefore how could I be responsible for the fractures that exist between us now? That ever since I entered adulthood, a time when I could exert control over my circumstances, that every fiber of my being has rejected the faith that has imposed these impossible conditions on our relationship. I know that I?m not the demon in this matter, but if you insist on believing that I am, then I challenge you to put yourself in my situation where you are forced to weigh up the pros and cons. Think for a moment of another belief system, possibly Islam for instance, and imagine the inner struggle you would have adhering to its way of life. I was just 16 when I took my baptism vows, by all standards just a child. If anyone really took the time to get to know me then they would have easily seen that I had no real concept of the commitment I was making. The life of a Witness was all I ever knew, it was all you ever taught me, everything else was taboo (that rhymes!). It is an absolute injustice to think that I am now going to have this held over me for the rest of my natural life. Even the law recognises that children of this age are ill equipped to make serious commitments that will have lasting effects, such as marriage, voting, drinking, smoking etc., and yet there is nothing more permanent than a Witness baptism? What amazes me still is that at that age we are very much still under the guidance of our parents, yet despite their neglect in the matter in discerning whether the commitment is one their child should be making, it is the child who pays the ultimate price with no immediate accountability going back to the parents. They are not the ones who lose their entire support network of close family, long-term friends and acquaintances, their reputation, dignity, and sense of self worth. In fact it might be the complete opposite, fellow believers rally around the parent to give their support and sympathy, enabling the parent to further deny their parental instincts and justify this unnatural behaviour.
At 25 I am far more sympathetic of the tremendously difficult task parents have in raising their children. On account of this, it would be wrong to critisise my parents who believed they were doing the right thing at the time by embracing a solid framework of guidance for their family. Being young people themselves in an unstable marriage, I can imagine it would have been far more appealing to take on what appeared to be a tried and tested system, than to learn by trial and error to develop your own along the way. I also have great respect for the importance of raising a child with morale values and principles. I do however seriously question how healthy it is to inculcate (indoctrinate) a child?s mind with values they are taught are resolutely unquestionable? It is not the place of a parent to dictate whom their children will become. If it was, a parent would be responsible their whole lives for their children, and the children could justify playing the victim and never learn the value of accountability, or in fact be responsible for their own salvation. As you are frequently told, children are a blessing, an inheritance, and yet some still find a way to justify shunning them when they cannot be what is unreasonably asked of them? It takes an enormous amount of courage to stand up to those you love, knowing you have to be honest with them at great cost to yourself, hating the thought that it will cause them pain. Then having to face up to the reality of a world that you have not been prepared for, and navigating it completely alone without the respect and support of the people who could have been there for you. Knowing that they are just standing back waiting for you to fall so they can rush in and say, ?I told you so?. Even though the reason for their occasional despair and instability is a direct result of unbearable dejection, and the compounding issue of diminished self worth. I honestly believe you have no reason not to be proud of your child (sister, brother, cousin), each person has their trials, none of us are bad or malicious people. I know plenty of people who would be intensely grateful for healthy, happy, intelligent, socially conservative family members doing their best to make a way for themselves. It seems the most unnatural thing in the world to me to not be proud of your child or sibling, to push them way, to keep them at an arms length so you can sleep peacefully at night. I do not believe that your god asks this of you; it is inconceivably cruel. It puzzles me that you cannot look at it as objectively as I do and see that for yourselves? I hope that I never become so arrogantly convinced in my absolute rightness as to all things, that I could justify sacrificing the hearts of the people I have an obligation to love and cherish. I know the fear that may drive you in this respect, and it is anything but a ?wholesome? fear.
My previous drafts of this letter contained numerous painful memories of our recent dealings, of which in hindsight I perceive were written with some bitterness. I?m not trying to make you feel guilty, or to try to change what you believe, I am just trying to make some sense of this senselessness. I hope that one day you will let the compassion that I know is in you, guide you to make an attempt to put prejudice aside and understand those people who are different from you, aren?t a threat to you. I cannot help but feel that people who think as you do, are afraid to accept the diversity of others out of fear that it will challenge you to question your own unquestionable beliefs. If you are so thoroughly convinced in what you believe, then why should the outside pose such a fearsome threat? It isn?t possible to turn off that part of your rational brain which forces you to question and take with a grain of salt all that you hear and discern to be truth. I don?t believe a person can ever be set in an impermeable train of thought, as our life experiences will constantly shape our future choices. I personally am excited by this prospect, and realise for myself that it is essential to constantly review my ?working view? of the world. Nothing in this life is permanent; change will always be inevitable.
I wish I could avoid altogether dredging up recent events, but I feel for my own sake I need to express how your dealings with me made me feel, in an attempt to put them behind me. I could have chosen to write to each of you individually, but I thought in doing so it would limit your ability to see the scope of the serious issues between us. On account of this I have addressed these next sections specifically to each of you.
The first experience I call to account was when I attended the Sydney Convention in late 2003. I did so by taking a bus each way from Brisbane to Sydney, because I wanted to be there. I knew that when I got there I would have to stay alone, eat alone, while my family would be just a short couple of blocks away together. I knew I would have to sit alone, and be made to feel like a leper amongst hundreds of people I was once acquainted with. I knew that the experience would set me back in terms of self worth, knowing that I would feel as though I should yell ?unclean, unclean? as I passed through the crowds. So naturally it did not surprise me that D(long-term family friend & witness) turned her head away from me in disgust when she saw me on the train, and that my own sister T(eldest sister) rather awkwardly chose to keep on walking when she caught sight of me. So, I went full well knowing that I would be treated as a second rate unworthy person unable to speak with the other 60,000 people in attendance. What I did not expect though was the promise mum made to spend time with me while I was there. I certainly did not ask this of her, and did not expect it. I thought perhaps her motherly sense had prevailed to see how difficult an experience it was for me to be there, and was offering me some form of light relief. Well mum you and I know that you didn?t hold true to your promise, and sent the twins(little sisters) and R(little brother) with a note to tell me so; apparently I didn?t even deserve to be told in person? I wonder if you have even the slightest comprehension of how you shattered my heart that day? Attending that convention was possibly the most defining moment of my life, on account of the terrible pain I was made to feel. I can handle being humbled when it is necessary, but I will never accept that I am worthy of being treated as rubbish, to do with as you please. At the time I chose to see it from your perspective, and I felt so guilty for the pain I unknowingly had caused you, and at the time thought little for myself. It wasn?t for some days that the reality of what had happened really hit me. I realised of course that mum had been threatened by the elders with judiciary action if she came to see me as promised, and was naturally fearful for herself and her younger children. At that time in my life I was so broken and in such despair, that I am in all astonishment that I could have seemed such a demon in your eyes that by us sharing a few short moments over lunch that I could have deprived you of your salvation? It reminded me of what sort of a negative control could be obtained over a person in a vulnerable state of mind. Worse still is the fact that R(little brother), N(little sister) and V(little sister) experienced first hand what would happen to them if their own personal belief systems one day dictated to them that they too cannot be Witnesses. I seriously question, as I suggest should you, how they are supposed to make a ?whole-soled? dedication to their God when they are driven by the fear of losing everything they have ever known, and anyone they have ever loved? The message is clear, we will love you and support you for as long as you continue to be what we ask, but if the day comes when you cannot be that person we will reject you, and shun you, and you will be unworthy of our love and support.
As for my sister T(eldest sister), her dealings with me make me feel completely cold. I really don?t know what sort of a person you are, my theory is that you are very easily led, seeking the misguided approval of those you respect. The way you have dealt with me, although the most brutal, affects me the least because I feel you aren?t entirely living your own life. I believe there is more to you than you will allow yourself to realise, when I knew you, you did not reflect the qualities of a person who is living true to herself. It wasn?t really you who came to see me that day in 2002 to wish me a good life and tell me goodbye forever, was it? I went back to work that day in a complete state of shock. I was hyperventilating so badly that 3 of my workmates had to hold me up. I can only imagine that you must have deeply regretted speaking those words to me, they were callous and unnecessarily cruel. You and I both knew where we stood; I understood and respected the status quo and had not attempted to question it. I know it was your husband who influenced you to take that unnecessary step. He may not have said it in ?so-many-words?, but I?m sure it was generally implied.
Now for my dear sister A(older sister), who I have always felt was a deeply connected part of me. I respected you and looked up to you for most of my life. When others pushed me away you did your best to make me feel that you would always be there for me, although it be in a limited capacity. I realised a couple of years ago that you would never come to respect me in the way that I deserved to be respected by you. In our limited dealings over the past few years you have spoken to me in only sympathetic almost patronizing tones, you never made me feel empowered or capable. Your honest belief in me would have done me much good in times when I needed it most. I no longer wish for the small crumbs of relationship you throw my way. By rejecting your shallow attempts I am acknowledging that I am deserving of much more, and as a result I am a far better and stronger person without it. You might now feel relieved to be released from this burden of conscience that you have had in your dealings with me. You will no longer have to chastise yourself for being too liberal in your dealings with me, or feel guilty for being the instigator of the ?treat em? mean keep em? keen? policy. The same applies of course for all members of my family. Either you do your best to respect and support me, or we are all better off continuing the façade that the other no longer exists.
I cannot tell you enough just how much I love you, and how difficult it has been to say these words and to truly mean them. I am sorry for us that things are the way they are, its such a sad waste of blessed healthy lives. I am so incredibly proud of myself for all that I have overcome as I am for each of you, as I know very well what personal battles each of you has had to face. Triumphing in the face of adversity truly builds character doesn?t it? I can tell you though that I no longer live in fear of losing everything I have ever loved or of hitting rock bottom, because I?ve already been there.
Sincerely,