Oh, Bem. Get well soon sweetie...broken ribs! Ugh!!! (((gentle hugs)))
Feel better soon!!!
love
essie
Posts by Fleur
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46Send some cheering up for our (((bem)))
by xenawarrior ini understand that bem was involved in a car accident a couple of days ago and she's suffering from some broken ribs and a broken toe and is in a great deal of pain.
in addition, her car was totaled.. ((((((((((((bem)))))))))))) sending gentle hugs your way, my friend.
please take care of yourself and i hope you heal quickly and are back with us very soon !!.
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6
U2 Yahweh
by peacefulpete ini can't be the first to comment on this but if it was not mentioned before u2's new album has a track titled "yahweh".
here are the lyrics:u2 lyrics.
take these shoes.
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Fleur
I just found this Bono quote on a huge U2 fansite called Interference: it was info gathering about the new CD before the release;
*Update: 7/14/03 (rumor) Jahweh "a tune with the title of a God as he/she is known in another religion" Thanks to Surge
U2 loves NYC...they must have had more than their share of seeing JW's in the city. I'd love to ask Bono if the song is about JW's.
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I finally said enough is enough (shunning)
by Fleur ini did what i was asked.
all these weeks, i did all my mother asked when it came to dealing with the matters at hand for her.
i'm nothing, if not loyal.. so over the weekend, when mother called for us to please come and deal with my relatives coming to the house to pick up boxes of my grandmother's belongings.
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Fleur
Wow thanks everybody...I don't feel particularly graceful in my handling it...I just felt that the lecture I got was the last straw. The thing that really got to me was that the person giving it had the scariest, totally blank expression on their face...so totally Stepford...I knew she fully believed every word she was saying.
I have felt such peace since deciding that I wasn't going to go. My mom blames this person for me not going (she wanted me to hear the talk, LOL which I'm sure I could have recited myself, all JW funeral talks are the same) but I told her it was just the final thing that made the decision for me; and it's a larger decision than just one event, it's a turning point. There is no going back from this.
Maybe this is what they call acceptance? I don't know.
I do know one thing; none of these people have any idea how much that little old woman meant to me and how much I'm going to miss her...and that has nothing at all to do with the fact that I didn't subject myself to their abuse last night.
She never treated me that way; I know in my heart she wouldn't have wanted me to.
Thanks so much everyone, each post here means a lot to me. I told my husband...I can't ever further the interests of any organization that is set up to allow abuse of women and children (and men for that matter) as status quo. Not me.
love you all,
essie
p.s. Czar...I smiled, thinking of your little happy jig for me. I could smooch your face for that, thank you sweetie :)
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23
I finally said enough is enough (shunning)
by Fleur ini did what i was asked.
all these weeks, i did all my mother asked when it came to dealing with the matters at hand for her.
i'm nothing, if not loyal.. so over the weekend, when mother called for us to please come and deal with my relatives coming to the house to pick up boxes of my grandmother's belongings.
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Fleur
I did what I was asked. All these weeks, I did all my mother asked when it came to dealing with the matters at hand for her. I didn't say no, not once. I'm nothing, if not loyal.
So over the weekend, when mother called for us to please come and deal with my relatives coming to the house to pick up boxes of my grandmother's belongings. I did so without hesitation, so she would not have to deal with them. Least I could do for her.
Even though I knew it meant that I would likely somehow be either ignored or preached at. I was prepared to pull myself up by the bootstraps after either event and carry onward.
It ended up being the latter; I got a long, indepth lecture on returning to the organization from a relative (authority figure) I was particularly close to as a child.
This person gave me the whole routine...said that I had suffered the discipline for my actions, that I shouldn't feel shame now and should come back. I had enough. I told this person that I felt no shame because my ex was dictating my actions, what he expected of me and how quickly he expected me to do it if I was going to be 'allowed' to get out of the marriage (threat of violence clearly implied by him and enhanced by his habit of throwing things, holding me against the wall so I couldn't leave, sexual coercion and other abuse methods of his choice) But I left that part out.
This person looked shocked and said "he will pay for what he's done but don't let him rob you of everlasting life." They took the opportunity of me being vulnerable in grief over my beloved Grandmother to press the following guilt buttons:
1: (insert name of younger relatives here) "Really miss you and want you to come back so that you can be part of our lives again."
When I told her that I can be a part of their lives anytime they wish, they just have to choose it she even acknowleged that she doesn't believe I'm bad but that to be part of the family again I need to 'come back to the flock.' Then she went for guilt button #2:
"Your sweet husband who is so good to you now deserves to live forever and if you come back he'll come into the Truth"
As if he has no mind of his own and is a little lemming, ready to jump soon as I do! He has read the literature, and he told me at the beginning of our relationship that I could go back if I wished but that he'd be home watching football and see me when I got back from the meeting. *smile*. They couldn't sell him what they have to offer if they paid him to take it. He just doesn't buy it.
When I didn't react to that, she went for the emotional jugular:
"Your child deserves to have a future."
)(*!^%~^$~%! I was so angry by this point. I said "My child deserves to have the choices I never had!"
She says that I took a gamble when I got married, that everyone does, and that she didn't approve of what I'd done after the divorce (new relationship) and I told her again that I felt no shame and that I did what I had to do to get out of the bad marriage alive and that I was glad I was still here to raise my child. Then I reminded her that I had to share custody still with my Ex and that my life would become very different if he saw me making any move toward getting reinstated (even if I wanted to) that it would change, overnight. She dismissed that completely and said "Don't let him stop you, just ignore him!" Obviously, this is a woman who has never lived in fear of the man she was married to.
In the end, she said she loved me (first time in seven years) and held my face in her hands and said "Just do it, just come back. Everyone loves you and is waiting." I told her I didn't believe the way I used to and she said "You can again, read Draw Close to Jehovah and read your Bible. It's time now, come back to the flock and the angels will rejoice over you, you little lost sheep."
I was glad at least to be able to leave with her the knowledge that my Ex had a major hand in my df'ing in ways that no one wanted to realize. She had no problem believing me. I really thought that something positive had come from the exchange even though it still sickened me to be preached at for so long. I figured that maybe I had made her think, just for a moment.
At the end, she said that she couldn't speak to me when she saw me at my grandmother's memorial if I came to the family dinner (like I planned to go, they're all JW's! I wasn't invited!) and then indicated that she didn't want to shun me but said it was "the direction of the organization."
Then, the next day I spoke to her on the phone briefly to relay some info from my mother (another relative put her on the phone, I didn't ask to speak to her) and at the end she said, again, "Remember I can't talk to you if I see you later." That had to be the fourth time she had told me something that I already knew.
That was it. Here I have spent months now running interference between these relatives and my parents, the only one of several grandkids willing to mediate and help iron out important issues like legal papers being exchanged and all...I have put up with the derision of these people for the sake of my grandmother while she still lived and now to respect her memory, but then, I just snapped.
I decided there was no way in hell I was going to validate these people or their hairbrained cult by going to my grandmother's so called memorial, which would actually be an infomercial for the WTS anyway. They would have so called 'worldly' family there who make me look like a saint when it comes to track record but because they weren't baptized as children, they are fine and dandy to associate with. HYPOCRITES! I want no part of any of this. My husband said the only word that fit the way that I have been treated is "inhumane."
I told my husband he could do as he wished, and he said he had no desire to go. "Either they'll not talk to me because I'm married to you, which will annoy me, or they WILL talk to me and that will REALLY annoy me." He responded.
I told him that I was drawing the line. They have abused me enough with this cruel practice, I was not going to show up to be shunned at my own grandmother's funeral any more than I would bring the rope to my own hanging.
Nothing they said would have comforted me, anyway. Now that Grandma is gone the last link between me and that part of my family is gone, and I am no longer willing to let them hurt me.
They know where I am, if they want to accept me without the religion. Otherwise, I wish them peace, I love them, but I just won't let them hurt me anymore.
Know what I did instead of going to be shunned? I said to my husband, "Lets go and buy a beautiful christmas present for your grandmother."
And we did.
To any JW's who are lurking here please think about this: Even murderers are allowed to have familial visits in prison. Most murderers are not even put away for life without chance of parole. It would be considered cruel and unusual punishment.
I have never murdered anyone. I was a woman in an abusive marriage, who divorced a man who treated her like trash and then married one who treats me like gold. This is my sin in the eyes of the WTS. This is why I am unworthy to be a part of my own family.
Is that right? Think about that. And if anyone you love has been cut off from your life by the organization...think about talking to them. Just think about it.
No one should have to be shunned for leaving an abusive marriage and finding happiness. That's my stand, and I am sticking with it.
Thanks for listening...
love,
essie
p.s...my husband, and his family who are wonderful people (never jw's) all said they were proud of me for refusing to let my family abuse me this way anymore. That felt good :)
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U2 Yahweh
by peacefulpete ini can't be the first to comment on this but if it was not mentioned before u2's new album has a track titled "yahweh".
here are the lyrics:u2 lyrics.
take these shoes.
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Fleur
Yahweh
Take this heart
And make it breakhe's already done that for me!
Like all of U2's lyrics these can be taken so many ways. I interpreted the song to mean that if God is there, why isn't HE doing something more? Why does he take our hearts only to break them? That was the way I felt the lyrics, anyway.
The whole cd is a masterpiece, though. Yahweh is actually my least favorite song of all.
"Sometimes you can't make it on your own." is much more meaningful to me..."Let me take some of the punches for you tonight." with lyrics and melodies like that, who needs heaven for anything?
~essie
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Review: Draw Close to Jehovah Book
by Sirona ini read the draw close to jehovah book because a jehovahs witness told me that it had some ?deep?
spiritual information in it.
the book appears, at first glance, to be all about knowing jehovah god and his attributes.
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Fleur
ah, talk about "proper food at the proper time" ;) thanks so much Sirona and Ezekiel3 for your insights. A relative suggested this book to me saying it would 'restore my damaged faith' in Jehovah's love.
They just get sneakier and sneakier, don't they with this stuff?
"Even if we cannot at first understand a certain account or see how it fits in with God?s personality, our study of the Bible has already taught us more than enough about Jehovah to enable us to see that he is unfailingly a loving, fair, and just God."
Yeah...I was just saying to my mom that I don't understand all the killing that went on in the OT and she said "Don't ask me to explain it, I don't understand it either" then in the same breath went on to say "but I'll die before I leave the organization."
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23
The subtle distancing of my Witness past....
by logansrun inhello folks,.
it has been said by many long-time ex-witnesses that the greatest stage of "healing" we can go through is when we feel like an ex-ex-jehovah's witness.
more and more i have been feeling this way.
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Fleur
Perhaps it's my circumstances -- my only Witness contact, my mother, is very liberal and never, EVER brings up any JW stuff --
To be honest, I think that you hit the nail on the head right there. I have been out for going on seven years now, and on exJW forums on and off for going on five. But the thing that draws me back, I find, is the fact that 99 percent of my family are still in and when issues arise, deaths in the family, weddings, anything else that causes the wounds to be reopened, I need to come back and talk to people who truly understand what I have been through and many of whom are going through it themselves.
I am thrilled for anyone who gets their whole family out or who only has one or two JW relatives and can find a way to put the past behind them quickly. There definitely is the danger of getting 'stuck' and bitter. That is a waste of time and life, in my opinion.
On the other hand, I don't think though that if you've never been shunned on a grand scale by everyone in your family including parents, that you can know how deep the pain is. It's just a matter of never having been through the experience yourself; its like, well, for want of a better comparison, child birth. You can describe it and people can understand the mechanics of it, but you can't know it until you've suffered it. I guess guys can say the same thing about getting kicked in the...well you know.
It's a singular kind of pain, and people process it differently. Your advice to forgive those family members who shun you is good. I try to do that because I know that they are doing what they think is the ultimate act of love. But I also hold each of them accountable now as to how they treat me at any given time based on the circumstances, like the issues surrounding the recent death in my family. They're treating me like shit and I don't think that is at all okay. I don't know when I will be able to forgive them completely for their coldness.
I understand where you're coming from...you give good advice that I am sure will apply to many here. For myself, I have realized that no matter whether or not I ever post here again or if I just go off into the sunset and do other things (it's not like I 'live' here anyway) that I am now and will always be, on some levels, a recovering Jehovah's Witness. There is no way to push any emotional fast forward buttons and make it go away. Especially since I have to continually deal with JW issues literally every day of my life because of my child.
I guess it's like 12 step groups: take what you like and leave the rest. Some folks move through their recovery more quickly than others, but all bear the scars. We just wear them differently.
this probably makes no sense I'm sick as a dog and its way past my bedtime...but I just wanted to respond. I hope it made some sense.
I wish you every joy, peace and happiness,
essie
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Special Happy Thanksgiving to those of you without family due to the WTBTS
by confusedjw ini know thinks would be very different for me, if my family wasn't out with me or if i was df'd or if some friends from the hall didn't stay in touch or if i hadn't been able to make other friends.. i know that for some of you, the holiday season stinks because of being in limbo or being df'd and not making new friends yet or other reasons all related to the wtbts.. maybe you are alone without your family.
that is terrible knowing that in general this is a day that family is celebrated.. a huge (((hug))) to you then.
my apologies that life is like that for you this moment and i hope happiness runs you down and overtakes you very soon!.
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Fleur
thanks so much for the really sweet thread. It was just what I needed to hear tonight.
This is going to be a really sad and shunning-filled weekend for me, and knowing that people here really understand what I'm going through helps, a lot.
I am grateful for the small little family I have on my own...that I've chosen and who have chosen me. I was just watching Lilo and Stitch on the Disney Channel (never saw it before) and at the end, the little alien who is told he can only ever be destructive and never have a family says of Lilo and her sister;
"This is my family. I found it on my own. It's small, and broken. But it's still good."
Please tell me why I can't stop crying...
hugs to everyone and much love,
esmeralda
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Anyone raised a Witness and broke free?
by rune inhello, my name's daniel and i'm new to the forum.... i was raised a witness for the first 14 years of my life and then finally got out when my dad turned atheist...i live in ottawa, ontario of canada... i'm 21 now... still kind of unaccustomed to the world at large, if you catch my drift.
my msn is [email protected] if anyone wants to chat.
nice meeting you all
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Fleur
Welcome, I am so glad you and your dad are free :)
Born in, raised in...99 percent of my family are still JWs...you can learn a lot around here, I'm glad you've made it and hope you'll find it comforting to be with people who truly know where you've been, and where you're very likely headed.
I know it can be scary at times, but life 'out here' is wonderful. I'm so glad you made it :)
hugs,
essie
p.s. 3rd Son, wonderful to see you! *hugs* to you and Mrs. 3rd :)
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MY MOTHER IS VERY SERIOUSLY ILL !
by badboy inshe has cancer and is not expected to live.
she properbly has only a short time to live.
how sad!
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Fleur
I'm so sad to hear this badboy. I will be thinking of you both.
hugs,
essie