sixofnine,
I left because I had "seen the light", but I guess I should really rephrase that to I had "seen the glow", because when I left, I hadn't been to this site, or even looked up Jehovah's Witnesses on the internet (I was so brainwashed about "apostates" it actually took me three years after I left to get up the courage to type "Jehovah's Witnesses" into google and I was shaking so much I thought I was going to have a heart attack!). I had told myself at a young age (12-ish) that if the society ever changed the teaching on the 1914 generation doctrine that that was my sign that it was not the truth. I had some concerns with various doctrines over the years, but I hadn't read anything apostate (and I was raised a witness), so the concerns weren't too well formulated in my mind. It took me two years after the generation doctrine change to finally get up the courage to leave (my immediate family are all witnesses, so that of course was a major consideration), and even when I did leave, I was so mixed up about everything, I just felt like I was in a big fog for the first year or so. I didn't know how many of the society's teachings I really still believed, or whether I wanted to remain a Christian, or if I even believed in God. Then the enormous sense of freedom finally kicked in and things got better. On my own (and with my husband's help), I started to realize how ridiculous a lot of the teachings were. When I finally found Randy's site and this site, and read Crisis of Conscience, mentally, things really started to fall into place.