Hi Dubstepped.
Listened to this last night, awesome and the similarities are uncanny.
My father was an elder and the secretary of the congregation.
He was the same as your dad although his abusive behaviour at home included physical abuse, hitting, belt thrashing etc.
But at the Kingdom hall he was the life and soul of the place, laughing and joking, bros and sis would say to us
"you must have such fun at home with your dad, he is so funny and jolly" - we knew otherwise.
He was an intimidating person - he's passed away now but the scars are still there. Especially because he knocked the confidence out of us and he was a bully.
Family study was very hit and miss, sometimes at 10:00pm at night when we had school in the morning he would decide it was time to study.
If we ever did the bible reading and we took turns to read. If you mispronounced a word or was a bit rushed when reading he would shout at us, and correct us, make us read it again to get the "flow of the reading". This made it worse sometimes we would cry, as you can imagine we were all scared of him including my mum.
My mum was the same as yours she was a buffer between us and our dad and would try and keep the peace.
No wonder all of my family are messed up and on anti depressants.
All of my 5 sisters are still in, Im the only one out.
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Keep them coming loving the podcasts !!
Cheers, WGO.