Posts by sass_my

7

Re- registered to vote

by Quester55 in

i can no longer be among the ranks of the whining, complaining and naysayers who do not vote in our national elections.

what individuals choose to do according to free will is their own business.

i heard soeting somewhere that has continued to prick my consciense for a long time.

sass_my_frass

Hey congratulations! I voted for the first time last year, it was a great feeling.

31

Have u found friendships w/ worldy people be hard?

by blkblk13 in

so, i'm embarking on slow fade and i think it's time for me to start making friends w/ some non-jdubs so that i'll have a support network once i decide to be completely out and everyone ive ever known abandons me.

ive always gotten along much better w/ wordly people than jdubs so i'll haveno problem securing friends but im concerned about being to keep them.. i want out of the org for various reasons but i must admit i still believe many of the teachings.

i just think the leadership and organization itself is corrupt.

sass_my_frass

A tip: drop the lingo. They're not 'worldly people', they're 'people'. They're the normal people.

It takes time and effort to make new friends, don't kid yourself. Old friends are friends because of all the times you've shared together. You have to spend similar amounts of time with new people before they give you the same feeling of friendship. Don't skimp.

I'd say that holidays aren't close to the most important thing in a relationship but suggest that it's going to depend who the other person is. A relationship is partly about balancing what you have in common against what you don't. If it's the holidays thing that makes you unacceptable, well that's just the way it goes.

38

Ever fake ring a bell? Take a long time writing down not at homes?

by yourmomma in

my whole life, even when i pioneered, i dreaded field service.

i was always uncomfertable rolling up to peoples houses uninvited.

so i used to have this technique where i would pretend to ring the bell.

sass_my_frass

I always walked too quickly for the old pioneers. They'd been to every house in the territory a dozen times, they knew where they'd be rejected. My favourite field service was rural territory; a dozen of us in a big family van, we all start the clock at 8 am when somebody leaves a tract on the counter at McDonalds, then head on out driving for two or three hours. Each of us might have had to speak at the doors a maximum of twice.

47

Let's Hear it For Simon -Thanks For This Board - And All it Accomplishes

by flipper in

jw
friends

i think it's only appropriate to put out a thread to thank simon for the great job he does in moderating this board, watching over discussions to make sure that the purpose of jwd discussion stays focused .

i believe that he and the mods do a great job in helping this board along in it's journey - and enables us to have the freedom of speech- without having fear of reprisal - as long as the guidelines are met.

so, i for one would like to personally thank you simon - for bringing this board into existence, as it has helped many to be able to vent after leaving the jehovah's witnesses cult, and get support, and for others it has helped them have a great place to discuss many important topics that have a heavy play in many of our lives !

sass_my_frass

Yep, thanks again!

60

OK, let me explain....

by dawg in

so, the last few threads i've written have been about telling your families and friends how you feel; many of you have given me the reasons you don't speak out to your families, but i want to tell you the main reason you should.

please let me explain.... .

i keep on stressing this point because how it makes you feel, i'm telling you all, that for over 19 years, i let information about my thoughts out slowly, then the tipping point... at my uncle's funeral 2 february's ago, while listening to my family pontificate at dinner about who so and so is pioneering and the like, it hit me that i was sick to the core of them throwing their bullisi*t beliefs at me like i was inferior or something.

sass_my_frass

It gets too ugly and depressing. I'm very much happier with the current detente. I get the occasional ballistic missile for some minor border infraction but if I ignore it for long enough we can all pretend it didn't happen. Sorry that metaphor went a bit too far.

46

DIASSOCIATED NO WHERE TO GO LOST AND BROKEN

by DonaLeigh in

.

dls.

sass_my_frass

Hi and welcome. Hold on tight because it,s a hell of a ride briefly, and then things go quiet. Here's the only thing you can do that will help: find things you enjoy doing and do them. Do them until you're bored and then do something else. Do them even though you're in agony. Do them until you realise that you seem to be feeling better. Then keep doing them.

50

How did you handle facing the reality of death?

by song19 in

jw
friends

for those raised or who got the truth at a young age, how have you been able to handle the reality that you are in fact, eventually, going to die in this system?.

for me, this was a real hard reality check.

as a witness, my entire life i was convinced that i would see armageddon, that i wouldnt grow old and die.

sass_my_frass

It's possible that working that out has saved me from a lot more immature emotional outbursts. I'm pretty embarassed that I ever talked about what paradise would be like and how great it will be to be able to put things off for a hundred years.

Sheesh every time I think about paradise now it seems like hell. Here's me, right, lazy in an average way. If every person felt the same about getting anything done when we do literally have FOREVER to do it, nothing would get done. There would be no such thing as civilisation.

48

Son sends "apostate" text message - Now the elders want to talk to him!!

by GoingGoingGone in

my 17 year old son told his dad that he didn't want to be a jw anymore about 8 months ago i think, and doesn't go to meetings or assemblies.

he's been accepted to one of the best universities in the country and will start this fall, with his dad's blessing.

their congregation had the summer convention this past weekend.

sass_my_frass

Hmm, my opinion (short version): let him choose himself. Don't sell the idea and don't discourage it. He's the age where there are going to be growing pains with dad whatever happens. It's time for him to speak for himself on the things he cares about. If he cares about this, it would be good for him to say so. If he doesn't, good on him too.

45

Faders: When You Left, did Anyone Give a Damn?

by shamus100 in

jw
friends

it seems funny to hear how some get love bombed, others get left alone when they fade.

i moved and told nobody - by the time they figured i was 'weak', it was too late - i was gone.

so honestly, what was it like for you when you left the 'organization'?

sass_my_frass

For a couple of years I lived on my own in a new congregation and the only person I heard from was an elder who my mum had begged to invite me to dinner with his family. I changed cities and in my new congregation I was only going every month or so until I moved in with a sister whose husband had just moved out. She stopped attending meetings before I did but neither of us really heard from anybody. I moved cities again into an apartment with two younger friends, and they were the only people who chased me down for meetings, and that didn't last very long.

I appreciate having been left alone for so long. I stuffed it up by getting disfellowshipped though! I blame my mum; elders know when to mind their own business with their kids. Mum really didn't.

5

Sister Update

by sass_my_frass in

jw
friends

my sisters husband sent me a text message last weekend, saying that shed had a stroke due to the trial medication shes on, had been in hospital for a week but is now out and fully recovered.

im of the opinion that, if doctors are putting her on trial medication, this indicates that theyre just doing whatever they can to extend her life.

i think that either none of my siblings talk to mum and dad, or none of them even talk to each other.

sass_my_frass

My sisters husband sent me a text message last weekend, saying that she’d had a stroke due to the trial medication she’s on, had been in hospital for a week but is now out and ‘fully recovered’. I’m of the opinion that, if doctors are putting her on trial medication, this indicates that they’re just doing whatever they can to extend her life. I think that either none of my siblings talk to mum and dad, or none of them even talk to each other. That’s no big tragedy; not many families survive adulthood, it’s just a sad surprise when it happens to your own. Anyway, mum’s info is along the lines of ‘everything is ok, no panic, she’s not making end-of-life plans’, but I suspect that my sister knows full well what’s coming and she knows better than to bring it up with mum.

I still don’t have a lot of contact with mum and dad, I try to avoid it because it usually goes pretty badly and I can’t handle the circular nature of every conversation; it always ends up being about a stupid thing that happened ten years ago re this person not talking to that person in quite the right way. The way she clings onto that issue convinces me that she’s slightly crazy. I feel a sense of responsibility towards them, but not enough to put myself through the anxiety of talking to them very often. They’re monumentally depressed but insist they’re happy. They want to talk about it but then pretend they don’t care. They want us to make them a part of our lives but if we mess that up in some small way there are consequences for years.

Sorry, I’m on a rant because I emailed mum this week; I have neglected that a bit lately, I was trying to get into the habit of keeping them up-to-date with small events in our lives via email so she doesn’t have to hide a phone call from me and if it happens to be a bad mood day we don’t have to work through it. Anyway; in a couple of months it’s her mum’s 80th birthday – my Nan. Mum’s sister told me about it, and I love the idea of surprising her, partly because I love Nan and Pop and partly because of all the xmases and birthdays we’ve shunned over the years. We’ve been back to my hometown two years in a row now, mostly just to see them, and we see mum and dad if they’re in the mood. This year I was disinclined to go because of my sister going through all this; it’s just so awkward and hard on everybody. But hearing about my Nan’s birthday party threw all that out the window. There isn’t enough to celebrate in life, but 80 is a big deal. So I needed to tell Mum that we’d be going and we’d be going to the birthday party, and it just got complex and ugly the way it does.

I’m getting better at it all though; these days when I get some vicious email from her I remind myself that we don’t really know how far gone she is, and if all I do is make her feel useful or needed or wanted or loved for some insignificant amount of time, that’s an achievement. I also asked her how she’d feel about taking my nan and my sister to a day spa for a girls day, on me, and nobody needs to know who it’s from. Yeah that really didn’t go well. Unfortunately I also took the bait on some ugly stuff she said, but hopefully there’s enough else going on that she’ll just file it away in her great big cabinet of misdemeanours and it will get lost.

I’m disappointed that with my sister looking down the barrel of the worlds biggest disease, mum can’t let the past go and just be nice. I think she doesn’t have it in her anymore. She was always tough, upfront, blunt, and demanded nothing but the best from everybody. It’s morphed into something bitter, scared, unkind, and blind to how people see her, and it’s driven everybody away. I’m not taking the blame for that.

I’m still preparing for two possibilities; my sister makes it or my sister dies. My plan either way was to try to do something, anything, for her to try to give her a bit of pleasantness. I was thinking a weekend at a nice resort every now and then, or some time with a beautician, whatever. Clearly Mum’s not going to want to help, but maybe her non-JW sisters will. My quandary is whether I should care that it embarrasses mum when non-witnesses hear how messed up our supposedly good-christian family is.

sass_my_frass

Posts by sass_my_frass