The other day Mom was over and I asked her if she ever looked into the WT prior to accepting membership (baptized) and dragging us right into the WT along with her. Her answer was a very sad and disillusioned no. She's also having difficulty understanding how the WT with so many false prophecies, the hypocritical nature of most congregations, how this could be Jehovah's chosen people much less organization.
To me personally, although I was raised in the organization, I've always had a difficult time reconciling some teachings with actual scripture. While I did ascertain many privileges over the years, I never allowed myself to be fully immersed and be led blindly by just the interpretations/teachings of the slave. I always maintained a simple philosophy. Always look at every WT study from a common sense perspective. Some JW's are so blind that they in effect would go home and jump in the river if the WT printed it in the magazine.
It hasn't been easy to make sense of the reality of trying to build your life independent of WT teachings. I still believe in God but don't believe the WT is being led by him.
The sad reality is 95% of the time the WT takes advantage of people when they are at their weakest morally speaking. In weekly meetings we call this as "circumstances changing."
The hypocritical nature of the organization is incredible. Take for example how they recently played the WT video on how to make true friends. Members that are looking at the video subjectively will agree wholeheartedly with the presentation. The video is a good presentation except on some points it is a fallacious view of life almost fantasy like. The video says that a true friend would respect our beliefs. This is an accurate statement, except that when looking at it objectively the statement falls apart. For example, if we were to befriend someone and that person respected us as a witness and starts studying with us. After a few months, this study/friend now starts to question some past WT teachings. After we explain to our new true friend the 'new light, old light' teaching, our friend looks at us with a perplexed look, dumbfounded by our unrealistic statement. So in time, they stop studying altogether yet they want to remain our true friend, he just simply does not agree with our teachings yet will respect our religious belief. Now, instead of remaining true to the teachings of the video, the WT advises us to avoid them altogether as a worldly/bad influence. Hence, we were never a true friend after all because we now avoid such person based on his religious point of view. Therefore, the "true friendship" was conditional and not sincere.