I'll add, with regards to your niece and the possibility of you trying to take her and raise her as your own. If you are doing so because you just love this girl so much, that's a great and noble thing to do. If you do so because you're trying to get some relationship that you missed with your sister, you'll bring all of that dysfunction into that relationship with that girl and it may not be fair to her. Also, simply because an opportunity presents itself doesn't mean that you're ready or really even want to be a parent to the child.
If you want to fight to take her, do it because you truly want to be a parent to the child and because you genuinely care for her, otherwise you may be doing her a disservice if others are out there that she loves and that love her, even if they're Jehovah's Witnesses. It is easy to romanticize things like this and to read in some fairy tale happily ever after scenario that happens just because you kept her from a cult on some level, but it doesn't mean that would be the reality or overcome detached feelings. And doing this as some relationship with your sister by proxy isn't a fair expectation to put on the child. Just some things to think about. I may have missed some of that discussion in this thread.
dubstepped
JoinedPosts by dubstepped
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My BPD Sister Passed Away
by babygirl30 ini have started this, then restarted it, and it still sucks to even write this out - but my younger sister passed away unexpectedly last saturday (on my birthday).
i am going through all the grieving emotions, but there is more to the story that i could never and would never talk about to anyone that didn't understand the jw rhetoric.
so...here i am.. my sister has had borderline personality disorder (bpd) for as long as i can remember.
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dubstepped
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My BPD Sister Passed Away
by babygirl30 ini have started this, then restarted it, and it still sucks to even write this out - but my younger sister passed away unexpectedly last saturday (on my birthday).
i am going through all the grieving emotions, but there is more to the story that i could never and would never talk about to anyone that didn't understand the jw rhetoric.
so...here i am.. my sister has had borderline personality disorder (bpd) for as long as i can remember.
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dubstepped
My dad died 6 months or so after I was shunned. Of course, he pre-shunned like the extreme JW he always was. I remember my mom researching BPD to try to figure him out. It never fully fit as a diagnosis, but in the end it doesn't matter the label, he was who he was. When he died I grieved not the loss of the father I had, but the loss of the father I never had, and honestly my life didn't change for the worse because he was gone. I honestly let go of him when he shunned me. I was dead to him, he was dead to me, same with the rest of my family. I'm not going to sit around pining for people that actively shun me. I mourned their death with my shunning. If they come out someday then it will be like the resurrection I was promised. If they don't, that's on them.
I'm sorry that you lost your sister, and that with that you lost opportunity. I'm sorry that she was such an awful person to be around. However let me say, in response to......
I have ALWAYS held out hope that she and I would at some point reconnect - I have wanted that desperately. Every major life event that happened to me, I'd send her an invitation (never got a response). The only thing I wanted was to have my sister be my best friend...that's it.
Acceptance means letting go of the hope that it could have been any different. Read that again. Now once more and compare that definition of acceptance to what you wrote above.
Your sister was hurt in some way, thus the BPD. She was doing her best, and sadly her best was pretty awful. My dad's was too. In learning more about my dad's past though I get it. He was the byproduct of terrible parents that drank and threatened each other with guns and put him in the middle of a bitter divorce that split him from his siblings, who as the oldest he felt responsibility for. He was a very hurt person, and hurt people, hurt people.
That doesn't mean that the hurt he caused me doesn't hurt, but I can't hold someone to the fire for doing the best they could with the tools, or lack thereof, that they had. I had to let go of the hope that it could have been different because it couldn't. The same is true with your sister. She was likely doing the best she could with the pain and dysfunction that she carried and that others played into. People with BPD change the people around them too. It impacts others who then act in a reactionary way. It's like an addict and how they make everyone around them sick and often codependent.
If you want to love her then you have to love her for who she was, balance the awful treatment you received with the understanding of who she was and what she herself was up against, and let her go. Maybe write a eulogy you'd give and even if you never give it, get those feelings out and find some closure. Say goodbye to the reality of who she was and who you wished she could be with the acknowledgement that she was likely doing her best. Most people, even awful people, aren't malicious, they're just messed up, broken in some way, taking that brokenness with them everywhere they go and impacting others because they either haven't got help or there's no help for them. For many with BPD they will never get help and honestly the disorder itself precludes them from doing so. It's awful, and she wasn't happy either. A very tortured soul.
Take care of yourself, hugs to you, and I hope that you can find some acceptance in your life. It's one of the stages of grief, the one you want to get to, but also remember the grief isn't a linear process. It's messy. And it's not something you may just go through once and it's done. You take grief with you through life, but you get better at managing it. Let go of the hope that this could have been different. Everyone was likely doing their best, even if it wasn't good enough. -
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Poll: When my PIMI wife comes back from meeting. she is a different person. how many out there experience the same and why?
by goingthruthemotions inso i am trying to understand if i am the only pomo that experiences the situation where the pimi spouse comes back from a meeting a different personanlity.
it may not be obivious to the untrained eye, but i notice it and i know my sons notice it.
this last round after all the loyalty bs and armagedon bs it's like she has stayed stuck in it.
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dubstepped
It's not a personality disorder, she's just riding that brainwashed high. Lots of people go back to their parents house as adults and revert back to certain dynamics for a time. Kids go stay the night at a friend's house and are different for a bit when they get home. It's a very normal and human thing, hers just happens to be surrounding a cult. All humans have mirror neurons. You can see it in people picking up accents.
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Russell's followers in British Columbia?
by dubstepped inso i was interviewing a guy for a podcast episode today and he went and saw his grandmother over christmas to gather some history.
he wasn't raised a jw but it turns out his family was actually opposed to the jws because they went all the way back to russell.
according to him (from her stories), they refused to follow rutherford and that's where the split took place.
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dubstepped
Interesting stuff. The guy that I interviewed reached out to his grandmother for me and I'm going to try to interview her. We'll see how it goes.
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Russell's followers in British Columbia?
by dubstepped inso i was interviewing a guy for a podcast episode today and he went and saw his grandmother over christmas to gather some history.
he wasn't raised a jw but it turns out his family was actually opposed to the jws because they went all the way back to russell.
according to him (from her stories), they refused to follow rutherford and that's where the split took place.
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dubstepped
A quick search turned up this.
https://canadianutopiasproject.ca/settlements/standfast-bible-student-colony-british-columbia/ -
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Russell's followers in British Columbia?
by dubstepped inso i was interviewing a guy for a podcast episode today and he went and saw his grandmother over christmas to gather some history.
he wasn't raised a jw but it turns out his family was actually opposed to the jws because they went all the way back to russell.
according to him (from her stories), they refused to follow rutherford and that's where the split took place.
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dubstepped
Thank you Vienne (Vienne's daughter, right?). That gives me something to look up.
I might see if his grandmother would be up for an interview. It's not really the subject of my podcast per se, but it might be really fascinating. -
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Russell's followers in British Columbia?
by dubstepped inso i was interviewing a guy for a podcast episode today and he went and saw his grandmother over christmas to gather some history.
he wasn't raised a jw but it turns out his family was actually opposed to the jws because they went all the way back to russell.
according to him (from her stories), they refused to follow rutherford and that's where the split took place.
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dubstepped
So I was interviewing a guy for a podcast episode today and he went and saw his grandmother over Christmas to gather some history. He wasn't raised a JW but it turns out his family was actually opposed to the JWs because they went all the way back to Russell. According to him (from her stories), they refused to follow Rutherford and that's where the split took place. But before that he said that Russell's followers had photos of him in their homes (kinda culty) and that many sold their earthly possessions and lived in some commune in British Columbia.
Anybody else heard of this? I'm trying to research this commune or whatever it may have been. Sounds interesting, and admittedly the history of all of this still escapes me on many levels I'm sure, things I just don't know. -
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Upon learning of a terminal illness would you return to being a JW to appease your family?
by NVR2L8 inthis is an hypothetical question...i am doing well.
but i was thinking about how my jw family, grandchildren and all will feel when their inactive grandfather dies with no hope of being reunited in paradise.
of course there would be immediate rejoicing if i came back to the "truth" and a surge of conditional love from the "friends".
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dubstepped
Why lie to your family right at the end? Would that make a person feel better somehow? No, I wouldn't return to be a JW for any reason.
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Need to vent. I am thinking of leaving my wife.
by goingthruthemotions ini am so sick of this cult, this religion has such a grip on her.
since i left in 2014, things just are getting progressively worse.
and she it's just getting deeper and deeper.
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dubstepped
Can you be yourself in this relationship? If you can't, you need to express that and see how it goes. If she can't accept you for who you are and you're stuck walking on eggshells among a JW maybe it's time to leave. A friend of mine came to me talking about something similar. He tried so hard but the cult dominated his marriage still, and he left after 20 years or so. It was hard to tell his kids. But the sense of relief and freedom was immeasurable and he came back later lamenting why he took so long to do it.
Only you can decide where you are. Not us. I think holding you to percentages is silly. If the 15% of the time it was miserable she was hitting you we'd all tell you to leave. So percentages don't matter. What are you putting up with? What is she putting up with? What happens if you're authentically you? You say that you don't think she cares if the marriage falls apart. Why do you say that? Be you. Let her be her. If that isn't tenable, and often it is the JW that can't abide by the ex-JW being themselves, then you have to decide if that is worth enduring more of for whatever payoff you see.
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Greta Thunberg...what’s your view of her?
by minimus inshe certainly is passionate about climate change.
🤔.
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dubstepped
I think she's perfect as a pawn in someone else's game. She's got Asperger's so she's likely obsessed with this topic (they tend to get fixated on things) but because she's got a mental illness of sorts she's now free from criticism in the politically correct mind. She's untouchable. Any criticism will be seen as making fun of her illness. It's perfect to draw people in. She's also a child so that makes her untouchable to many.
I see her like AOC. Someone chose her to fit a role, literally from what I read or heard somewhere. She's a young woman of color and certain people will love anything she says, no matter how stupid, simply for those facts, in groups that celebrate those qualifications over any other.
The world we live in is weird.