i've been lurking for about 3 months now and thought i'd better finally sign up.
you have all been an immense help to me as i have come to realize that this isn't the truth so i want to say a great big thank you!
what a crazy, emotional ride it is to finally face the truth about the doubts that i have carried for many years.
Hi Freddo. Great to hear from you too mate. Yeah I remember what it was like to be cautiously lurking.
I'll see what I can do... most likely it will be yearly more than quarterly. Every three months is too much JW think for me. But yearly will be a good reminder for me to check my current beliefs and see if they need to be questioned.
Hope all is well with you.
Cheers - Stumpy
i've been lurking for about 3 months now and thought i'd better finally sign up.
you have all been an immense help to me as i have come to realize that this isn't the truth so i want to say a great big thank you!
what a crazy, emotional ride it is to finally face the truth about the doubts that i have carried for many years.
Thanks guys.
Bandicoot: We're currently in QLD
Magnum: Hey mate! Great to hear from you. Yeah I haven't been keeping up at all. No need to to be honest. Family are a lost cause unfortunately and all our new friends are interested in the overall story of our 'escape' but don't give a shit about the details. I also don't feel it's productive for me to live in the past... already did that. Too many new things I'm eager to discover and learn. But I have huge respect for those that can stay around and help the new ones waking up. Just isn't my path. Plus I've already laid out everything I can offer in my research folders. Have there been any big changes in the last 2 years?
How are things going for you? Hope you're both well.
DoC: Good for you. It's a good place to be (ex-exJW) if you can get there. Hi price to pay, but well worth it in the long run. Awesome to hear about your family doing well. Happy for you both.
Making friends is one of the hardest part of breaking free for sure. Have you considered joining a club (dancing, cars, hiking, meditation, Amazonian poison dart blowing, nudist colony etc...)? It's been an interesting experience for us, trying different friendships on, nurturing those that gel and moving on from other quickly lol. But now we have a great core group of friends that we are starting to build some history with. It takes effort putting yourself out there, but it's well worth it to find your tribe. Traveling sounds good!
i've been lurking for about 3 months now and thought i'd better finally sign up.
you have all been an immense help to me as i have come to realize that this isn't the truth so i want to say a great big thank you!
what a crazy, emotional ride it is to finally face the truth about the doubts that i have carried for many years.
Hi all. I can't believe it's been 3 years since I started this thread! Wow time flies.
Just thought I'd pop in and say hi. Mrs Stumpy and I are doing great. Better than we have ever been. It's awesome being completely free from JWism.
I'm glad I have this online diary from the most traumatic time of my life. It's interesting to look back on. Seems surreal that it was me as I read through it. Hard to believe now I was once an elder/pioneer/bethelite/construction worker!
Yes it took some time to get on our feet and the transition was agonizing at times. Loosing all our family was the hardest. But now we are living life free to be who we are and to do what we want. We do drugs, are swingers and are practicing occultists! Lol... just kidding :) Contrary to popular belief inside the cult, hardly any 'worldly' people do these things. And we thought they'd be everywhere! Bummer. Lol.
Just want to say to those just waking up and afraid of the unknown future in front of them... it gets better. Way better.
Anyway just wanted to say hi to those I know... and for the newly escaped to keep at your journey. It's worth the effort, frustration, anger and tears.
Life on the outside is awesome once you find your feet!
Cheers - Stumpy
i've been lurking for about 3 months now and thought i'd better finally sign up.
you have all been an immense help to me as i have come to realize that this isn't the truth so i want to say a great big thank you!
what a crazy, emotional ride it is to finally face the truth about the doubts that i have carried for many years.
Thanks EdenOne, BOC, Freddo and DOC.
DOC I think the reason we got to move on from being exjws so quickly was because of a couple of things:
1) We just left everything behind that was connected to it - friends, family, attachments, forums etc. It's not easy to do and not for everyone, but severing the ties completely and starting life from scratch worked for us. I wanted to be myself and walking on eggshells as you put it just wasn't going to work for me. I'd already had 40 years of that. Ripping the band-aid off in one go wasn't easy, I won't lie. But 2 years down the track we're very happy we did.
2) We also made a clear choice to not go out of our way to make friends with ex-jws that we couldn't find some other common interest with. The last thing we wanted to do was constantly open up old wounds and never let them heal by rehashing the past over and over. We had big plans for the future and wanted to leave the past where it was. About half of our good friends are ex-jws, but we are all moving forward with our lives, not dwelling on being victims and supporting each other along the way as we rebuild.
3) We, along with our close ex-jw friends, have all worked very hard on our mindsets. We have taken the negative experience we all had and turned it into a positive. We do talk about being jws (how can we not, it's been a huge part of our lives), but that's used as a reference or framework for things we can relate to. None of us stay up-to-date with their current mags, teachings etc. We all have a lot of life still to live and we want to see each other reach our full potentials. Instead of creating a circle of negativity, we have created a positive one and this support has been extremely helpful in moving on.
Personally, I'm very happy I went through what I did. It has given me a frame of mind and reference I would never have had otherwise. It's turned me into the person I am today and the experience of coming out greatly influences the person I am becoming. After losing almost everything I loved (and at one stage the real possibility of losing my beautiful wife), I now know what I can face and that is very empowering. I'm using it to propel myself forward in business and life. Humans are very resilient, everyone here is far stronger than they think they are.
4) We also put ourselves way out of our comfort zone in trying to make new "worldly" friends. We joined MeetUp groups. Volunteered. Joined forums where others just moved to our city and are looking for friends. Reached out to people in our businesses. (That yielded some awesome friends.) Got a puppy and walked around our neighborhood with her. (That made the most friends and invites in the quickest time. People love puppies and will become friendly very quickly if they see you often.) We're going to join a dance group for lessons soon too. It's not easy, but the results are worth it.
We haven't hidden our past when making new friends. We just tell them matter of fact what happened and why we were friendless and people are fascinated. Most people live quite mundane lives so they love listening to something so off the wall. Once the story is told we move on to other subjects, usually about them. It one of the ways we're turning our past into a good thing. It also makes for some very deep and bonding conversations that propel the relationship forward much faster than talking about superficial stuff. Everyone out there is hurting in one way or another. Lots of people looking for friends themselves. There's a lot of lonely people out there. Ones with pasts far worse than mine. Lots of people are being "shunned" by family members too, even without religion as the basis. Realising these things helped us to have empathy, not feel too sorry for ourselves and move forward.
5) For me one of the biggest things I did to leave it all behind was to read like crazy. In the last 2 years I have read at least 2-3 books a week. Books on belief, mindset, psychology, history, spirituality, science, evolution, philosophy, biology, health, persuasion, manipulation, business, sales, marketing, quantum mechanics and physics, habits, NLP, hypnosis, fitness, sociology etc. I have an Audible account and listen to them while I work and commute. Best investment in time and money I've ever spent. I go out of my way to read things that challenge my current "beliefs" (I hate that word now). The subject of spirituality has been the hardest one for me to delve into. But I'm learning that jw spirituality is very different from the true meaning of that word. I try hard to suspend my current opinion and relate to the other side. It has opened up many new worlds to me that I couldn't pursue or even know about as a jw.
One of the best lines I have ever read says: "The question isn't 'Who am I?' it's 'Who am I becoming?'" This is how I live my life now.
I just finished an interesting book from the CBO of Google [X], the guys behind their driverless car technology. The book is called: Solve For Happy by Mo Gawdat. While like most books I read, I don't agree with everything (especially his bias for a "designer". Skip the last chapter unless you want to listen to some jw-like one-sided logic), this book is a very good place to start for those that are stuck in a state of unhappiness and want to move on. It's one of the few books I'll actually read again soon.
Don't beat yourself up or compare your self to others too much DOC. But also, don't allow others to hold you back from being the real you either. Life's short and nobody has any proof that there's anything more after this. Go and live it how you want to now, around people that love you for being you. It takes time and effort and lots of pain, but its a small price to pay for a much better rest of your life :)
Stumpy
i've been lurking for about 3 months now and thought i'd better finally sign up.
you have all been an immense help to me as i have come to realize that this isn't the truth so i want to say a great big thank you!
what a crazy, emotional ride it is to finally face the truth about the doubts that i have carried for many years.
Hi all. Wow it's been a while since I've been here. I got notified that my thread was back up and thought I'd say hi. I can't believe it's been over 2 years since we have left. It feels like a lifetime ago. No issues with anyone chasing us down to DF us. Our fade was completely successful. We have moved on with our lives and from religion. We are the same, yet very different people now. It's amazing to be free from the handcuffs the JW religion chains you with.
The hardship you must endure when you first leave is worth the life you get to have later on. The first year was the toughest. It was quite lonely at times. It's a weird feeling having hundreds of "friends" one day and none the next. Losing family is especially hard. We're both very happy now. We have made some really great friends. Friends we can have differences of opinion with and not be ostracised for. We actually trust these "worldly" friends more than any we had in the cult.
My parents and other family members haven't been in touch which is what I expected. Sad, but what can you do. They're the ones missing out. The rest of the "worldly" family have accepted us with open arms and it's been great to reconnect with them.
We don't consider ourselves ex-jws anymore. Just 2 people that happened to grow up in a cult, woke up and left. We very rarely talk about it anymore. Just passing comments from time to time.
I hope everyone here is doing ok. I know how hard it can be... but it does get better. Yes you have to leave a lot behind (family, friends etc.) but you also get to replace them with whoever you choose. We have upgraded and wouldn't go back.
Cheers - Stumpy
What is the background of these guys? No doubt they were raised as witnesses?
Hey mate. Just popping in. Meeting my ex-best friend who's still an elder on Friday for "lunch" and just want to check the latest JW crazy so I'm up-to-date. It should be fun and interesting. He knows I'm apostate and antitheist. Maybe he's starting to wake up...
Anyway, the story with this song is he (John Mann) was sitting home one day and witnesses came to his door. The little kid the songs about, was with his Dad and seemed extremely bored and not wanting to be there (surprise, surprise). When they left he couldn't stop thinking about how sad the kid looked so he wrote this song. Just struck me as funny that in the song the kids name is Kevin and apparently there's a new 'Kevin' class since I was last here :)
judged worthless was one i thought of today.
.
because anyone that isn't giving 100% all the time is judged by other witnesses as worthless..
Judgemental Wankers
i've been lurking for about 3 months now and thought i'd better finally sign up.
you have all been an immense help to me as i have come to realize that this isn't the truth so i want to say a great big thank you!
what a crazy, emotional ride it is to finally face the truth about the doubts that i have carried for many years.
Thank you for your kind words everyone.
Cofty
Yeah that's a stumper for any elder. Especially if said calmly and with conviction. What can they possibly say to that?
Half Banana
Thanks mate. Sorry to hear about the high price you had to pay
it did seem to initially offer a convincing and a totally embracing solution to all of life's problems
Yeah, until you discover they're all fantasy.
what a relief to be free from this JW collective paranoia and to be free to enjoy the ups and downs of a natural life determined by our own conscience and personal choices.
No kidding.
Bonsai
I loved your post. It has made my day and it also made me cry. It might very well be the best post I have read since coming to this forum. Very powerful stuff. I can relate to so much of your story.
Awww, thank you and sorry for making you cry. Obviously it hit close to home So many of us are in this horrible, horrible situation. It almost felt surreal writing it. They claim to be the most loving people on earth... they sure don't live up to it do they. Hugs from us to you both.
Stuckinanrut
Hey mate! Got your pm and just replied. Looking forward to catching up
MrQuik
I think you Aussies are going to be the first country where everyone leaves the cult.
We can only hope. There are definitely a lot here questioning things and slowing down. It will be very interesting to see what happens when the Royal Commission wraps up.
Jaydee
You're welcome mate. You have a pm.
FayDunaway
Your close friends who also had doubts who were the first to shun you...it's because they're scared. They don't want to lose their families and everything they've ever known. They are still trying to make it work for themselves, and the fact they shared doubts with you makes them feel insecure.
You hit the nail on the head. In fact not one of them have come after me, I'm sure they're terrified of what I know about them. It actually helped our escape be much easier. Still annoys me that they can be so disingenuous. These were good, decent honest elders that would do anything for you. I don't know how they sleep at night and get up and spew things from the stage they don't agree with. I just couldn't do it and live with myself.
Yes we're going to make sure our nephew and nieces never have to deal with this cult like we did. Their grandparents try but they get shot down very quickly.
Giordano
Did you fade or did you have to DA?
We tried to quietly fade for my parents but they just wouldn't let us. We aren't DF'd or DA'd. When I stepped aside as an elder we looked for a congregation an hour or so away to move our cards to. There was a suburb that was growing very fast with new construction so we went to the Sunday meeting. When we got there the hall was full and not one person came up to say hi to us. We left after the talk and the coordinator came out to greet us in the car park. He hesitantly asked if we were planning on moving in. Apparently the cong was growing way too fast and there wasn't enough elders. He was trying to talk us out of coming by saying it wasn't a very friendly or social cong. We thanked him for being honest with us and left. When we got into the car we both smiled at each other and said this is where we're sending our cards! So they were sent there a few days later and we told the new coordinator we were on holidays for 2 weeks. Once we knew they had our cards I texted the coordinator and told him we had to head overseas for a family emergency. After 6 weeks I texted again from an overseas number and told him we were going to stay, that our new secretary would be in touch to get our cards sent over soon. And that was it. We haven't heard from an elder since. CO emailed but I just ignored him.
Magnum
Good to hear from you mate. How are things going for you. I know we have very similar stories. Hope you guys are coping ok. Hugs from us.
Billy
I think it should be published in the Yearbook.
If we all had our waking up and getting free stories in a book I'd definitely read it.
Lisa Rose
I know this is tragic, am I am sure it was horrible at the time, but this just kind of made me laugh, your parents are very, very strange. It would almost be impossible for someone who is not a JW to believe people actually act this way
It is kind of funny to us too when we think back. Definitely wasn't at the time though. It was very emotional and devastating for her and I acknowledge that. She seriously feels like she will be all alone in the new system and that has crushed her. We were her last hope, thinking that she could at least be a good grandma to all of our kids in paradise, when she realized that was now gone too, she had a melt down. I'm not sure if my parents are any stranger than most other JW parents, maybe they are, but I've seen and heard of lots of other JW parents acting the same and worse in similar circumstances. For non-JWs yes all JW parents are incomprehensible, especially the way they act if forced to choose between their kids and the GB.
NeverKnew, Cyberjesus and Anders
Thanks guys
i've been lurking for about 3 months now and thought i'd better finally sign up.
you have all been an immense help to me as i have come to realize that this isn't the truth so i want to say a great big thank you!
what a crazy, emotional ride it is to finally face the truth about the doubts that i have carried for many years.
Hi everyone,
Well it’s been 12 months since I joined here and I thought I’d give everyone an update on what we’ve been up to since then and finally write our story of how we left. Sorry it’s a bit long and random. You may want to skip a lot of it. I’m kind of using this thread as a bit of a waking-up-getting-out journal for myself. It’s fun to see our progress in becoming normal “worldly” people.
It has been a crazy ride (as most of you have also experienced). Man oh man… I still can’t believe sometimes that our life has taken this turn. We were honest to goodness lifers in the cult. We gave it everything and were happy to do so for “God” and the “universal issue”. So much for that!
At the start being awake was very difficult. I had tried really hard to be a good, kind and caring elder and Mrs Stumpy was a sweet, thoughtful caring teacher to her students as she pioneered. We felt like we were part of something much bigger than ourselves, something meaningful and helpful. With that all gone it was very difficult. That, and facing up to the reality that we will both die one day, just like everyone and everything else on this planet. But slowly as the weeks and months passed, the good days started to outweigh the bad days. Lately it is about one day every two weeks where we have a bit of a down day as we try to reset our lives and face the fact we have wasted a lot of years. Plus, it is taking a bit of time to replace the purpose and direction (albeit grossly mistaken) we had in our lives. But we told ourselves we wouldn’t mope around and let the cult take any more of our energy than was necessary. We only have this life now and we are going to make the most of it.
So as far as leaving and fading we just couldn’t be stuffed dragging it out. I honestly don’t know how some of you guys do it for years on end. We knew what the end result would be either way with our family and friends. It was inevitable and to delay it was just going to be frustrating and futile. Mrs Stumpy has her mum kind of in. I have my parents, and on one side of the family I have grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins. Because we’d been away for so long we weren’t too close to any of them except the parents and grandparents.
Mrs Stumpy’s mum is a very “special” person that doesn’t really know what the religion teaches. Last time we were in service with her she was telling her studies about hell and burning in the “furry lake” if they didn’t become witnesses! She converted from the Sikh religion after Mrs Stumpy was baptised. She isn't really a true witness so she would be fine with our decision as long as she thinks we still believe in God.
But my family – at least the ones I care for – are all die hard, watchtower-before-absolutely-anything dubs… except for my mum who is a very sheltered person that just goes along for the ride with my dad. She hadn’t even heard about the new generation teaching when I asked her… and she’s an elders wife. You know those sisters that claim to have fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue and all sorts of other maladies that may or may not be real? That’s my mum. She does have some real things wrong with her health too but she definitely plays the ‘sick’ card when it suits her. She hardly goes out in service and when she does it’s just rv’s. She misses meetings whenever she can, hasn’t commented or given a talk in decades, never reads the magazines or new releases and prepares her tower in 5 minutes by randomly underlining every third line. She pioneered 45 years ago for 12 months and still lives off that glory. She’s a perfect example of being stuck in the FOG with the watchtower. I think the fear, obligation and guilt is a huge cause of all of these so called sicknesses lots of dubs, especially many sisters like my mum, have. I would feel sorry for her if she wasn’t such a total bitch about us leaving.
My Dad is one of those hard arse, everything is black and white, elders you definitely don’t want on your JC. He claims to be anointed. (I’ll fill you in on that story in a second.) They knew something was up. We were quickly getting sick of being around them and their stupid, ignorant, self-righteous, justifying everything conversation. So we planned things out well to escape and then ripped the band aid off quick.
We had been away on international construction assignments, in bethel and serving where the need was great for quite a few years. We experienced a lot of crap dealing with shithead missionaries, asshole CO’s and just plain retarded, self-righteous-wannabe-missionary needgreaters. One idiot bully missionary brother told a sweet older nun to her face she was a whore of Satan’s!!! Another one, in the same home, disfellowhipped a sister for fornication while at the very same time he was committing adultery with a teenage pioneer sister in the same cong!
When we rocked up to Australia I was peopled out. But… turns out there are heaps and heaps of freaks in the congregations here. Holy cow what a bunch of nut jobs! People constantly calling me at 3am off their meds, others calling 12 times a day until I answered and then hours long conversations talking them out of suicide and that no, the brother that looked at you weird and didn’t say hi at the meeting was probably just busy and looking at something else and no he doesn’t hate you and is not out to get you. One brother punched himself in the nose till he bled and then wiped it all over his shirt so he could just get out of his talk. One little old sister lost it at the field service group and called all the elders “stupid idiots” in front of half the congregation. What fun. There were all sorts of other weird things happening and because I was the new elder I got to deal with it all.
So I used that to my advantage and told the body of elders that I had dealt with a lot overseas and I was burnt out and couldn’t deal with these ones as kindly as I should be, as Jesus would… that I needed a break. I didn’t ask I just said I’m stepping aside for a bit and that’s it. It shocked them but no one was game to confront me on it as they could see I was serious. The CO visit was the following week. I used a bit of theocratic warfare and told him if I have a break for a year now I will be back serving in 12 months. If I don’t, I’ll step aside in 12 months anyway and will most likely never be back serving. He bought it. I actually liked him. Our last conversation was about the Royal Commission. He was watching all of it with great interest. The hardest part of my final weeks of being an elder was giving the memorial talk and an assembly part while fully awake. The assembly part had a section on how loving shunning is… right! (I skipped that part.)
So I go from elder giving an assembly part and memorial talk one month, to no longer an elder the next. Dad knew something was up. Our conversations had been tedious and trying when before conversation flowed pretty easily. Him supposedly being anointed led to some very interesting conversations about inter-galactic travel and exploration after the 1,000 years, the anointed possibly being able to materialize on earth eventually (so he could see my mum) and all sorts of other strange fantasies.
One day I asked him how he knew he was anointed.
For some background on this I need to explain that he has apparently always had trouble with the demons. When he was younger he had some demons calling out his name while he was sleeping. Turns out he had an umbrella that his grandmother has taken along with her while visiting a fortune teller and it was now supposedly demonised. He threw it outside and the voices followed it. Then he went out and broke it in half and threw it over the fence but could still hear them. After praying and calling out “Jehoober” all night the voices supposedly stopped. Since then he was fanatical about things being possessed by demons. Still pisses me off today when I think about having to destroy my smurf collection as a child because of that stupid rumor. Yet we always had umbrellas in our house and almost every witness owns one. WTF?
Anyway back on track… so I ask him how he knows he’s going to heaven to rule with Jebus and he starts telling me this crazy story about being out in service and how a lady (who he assured me was a witch) looks straight into his eyes and tries to put a spell on him while he’s at her door. Apparently he could feel the demons all around him so he freaks out and gets everyone to leave the territory because the demons are after them. Then not long after that he starts to hear voices in his head telling him he’s going to heaven. So he assumes he’s having demon problems again and its Satan getting into his head! I’m thinking ok this is some weird shit but at least I’m the only one you’ve told this crazy story to. Nope… he’s told all the elders in his cong. Great. So then the co-ordinator starts having a go at him, not for being delusional and asking if he’s on or off any meds… but for claiming to be anointed when it’s so obvious that he should be chosen over my dad as he was the coordinator and had way more responsibilities. He actually said to my dad “why would Jehovah chose someone like you over me?”. What a douchbag.
Anyway eventually my dad comes to the conclusion that it’s not the demons talking to him but it’s God himself. I asked him why would God make it so unclear and pretend to be Satan… he had no answer. He goes out of his way to meet up with other partakers and find out their stories of how they became anointed. They all have different experiences. When I asked him why they didn’t have the same experience in realizing they were anointed as him (wouldn’t God be consistent?) he gives me the same blank stare.
So he moves congregations and starts partaking and he becomes weirder and weirder. Then we move back to Australia and we stay with them for a few weeks while we get things sorted. I find out he’s on some very powerful narcotic drugs for his pain (he’s on a disability pension from a bad work related accident). I guess that explains a bit (or a lot) of what’s been happening. Buy now he’s almost become a recluse because of his health. During the day if he’s not doing elders stuff or out witnessing, he locks himself away in his office reading the watchtowers non-stop. Says they “speak to him in a different way now that he’s anointed”. OooKaaay.
By the way he hates the articles that say the new anointed are all mentally challenged
By the way my Dad's not mentally challenged... just very delusional.
So seeing he’s reading so much I start telling him during our phone conversations I’ve been collecting older publications and I start telling him some of the stuff I’ve been finding. He’s not interested in old light he says. I said but it was written with the help of God’s holy spirit. Still no dice.
So instead I started questioning him on things said at the Royal Commission which was happening live at the time. Every day I sent him the new recordings. His back was getting up. You see he and my mum had refused to go to the police (under the elders direction) over the abuse of a family member many years ago. I didn’t find out about it till years after the fact as I was living overseas. It should be dealt with internally so as not to bring reproach upon Jehoobers name I was told. It was a big scar over our family. This pissed me off and was against everything I thought was moral. When the Royal Commission started, I got in contact with that family member and I told my parents we were going to tell the police everything.
On a side note I once had a CO threaten to remove me if I didn’t follow the societies directions of not calling the police (this has since changed). We had a lot of child abuse issues come up in the area, some involving a dozen kids, and none of them were handled properly. It sickened me. I told him to go ahead, I was going to let the cops know no matter what and I would tell all the parents in the cong too. It was the right thing to do. Little fuck head. This same CO told us we shouldn’t go overseas to be needgreaters, that it was just an excuse for a holiday. When my wife wanted to get laser eye surgery he told her she didn’t have enough faith that the spew system was coming and she should wait!?! Then, not long after he gets bowel cancer (no doubt from all the shit he’s full of). The first thing he does is run to India and blows other people’s donated money trying to get healed by some mystic cancer guru! Where’s YOUR faith you little turd??? One of my biggest regrets is that he died before I could tell him to his face what a self-righteous, smug arsehole he was
Anyway back on track… so eventually my parents get worried to the point they come over. After some uncomfortable small talk my mum straight out asks me if I still believed it was the truth. She wouldn’t give up, acting all spiritual and self-righteous. This is the same woman that couldn’t explain the prophesy of how we came to 1914 if she tried, even with the explanation and pictures in front of her. I looked at Mrs Stumpy and gave her the look of ‘this is it’, we may as well get it over with. I went into my office and brought out all my folders of research and laid them in front of them both. I told them it was only scans and originals of the societies publications. They refused to look at them. After opening them myself and showing them the scans and that they were legit, my dad spent 2 minutes reading part of one article and said I was mad.
At least he gave it a good shot to see his sons point of view
I asked him how many books he read before accepting the “truth”. He said one and a half. I asked him if he had researched the religion at all in depth before committing himself to it. He said he didn’t need to, that it had the ring of truth to it. I asked why Jehovah’s Witnesses? He said when he was young he was filling up his car and there was a nice, polite well-dressed, well behaved family there and he thought to himself they must be part of the true religion. (At this time he was also into Erich von Däniken’s book ‘Chariots of the God’s). So he starts searching for the religion this family must be part of and lo and behold, his next girlfriend is studying with the witnesses. The rest is history. I say to him – “So you see this family, fall for a girl, assume the family were witnesses, read almost 2 books, study for a few months and then get baptised without looking into their history at all?” “How do you know the family were witnesses!?! They could have been Mormons, Baptists, Catholics or anything!”
Blank stare.
I questioned him on the quote from Geoffrey Jackson about them not being Gods spokespeople. “Why would he say that?”
Blank stare.
I said well I agree with what Geoffrey says.
He starts getting red.
I said well either Geoffrey was lying when he said that, in which case he needs to be dealt with, or it’s true and we should all believe him as a Governing Body member that they are not Gods spokesmen. Which one is it?
Blank stare but getting very red now.
He says he couldn’t say that they were God’s spokespeople because they would have taken it the wrong way and made fun of us.
I’m about to go into a tirade of how disgusting, hypocritical and cowardly that was and how was it that when we were at school with the national anthem we HAD to stand up for the truth in front of the whole school…
My mum cuts me off and asks again if I believe it’s the truth.
I ask her about a previous conversation we had about God killing billions of people at Armageddon. She started agreeing with me that it isn’t like a loving God to do that. Dad cuts in and says that we don’t deserve to live anyway so it doesn’t matter if they all get wiped out. It’s Gods justice and he has to act consistently.
WTF!?!
I say well he certainly is consistent when it comes to killing innocent people! He consistently murdered people and whole nations full of innocent women, children and animals in the Bible and he’ll be consistent when he massacres 99.99% of the earth’s population at Armageddon. (As I show them the quote in the WT 1958 Oct 15 pg. 614)
My mum freaks out, starts screaming and looking at me like I’m Satan’s spawn and runs down stairs – screaming all the way – and locks herself in the car. I haven’t seen her since. It’s been six months.
Dad strangely enough lets her go on her own. I know now this is him wrapping things up and his body language is starting to distance himself from me. I know he will start shunning me as soon as he steps out the door.
He looks at me and asks if I’m out of the truth. I tell him “if you can answer just one of my questions just from the Bible I’ll stay a witness.”
I say all your teachings are bible based right?
“Yes.”
And they can all be backed up with scripture right?
“Yes.”
Then from the Bible, explain to me the new overlapping generation teaching.
Blank stare with a now permanently glowing red face.
“You know this is a fundamental teaching right dad? And you can’t come up with a single scripture to prove it to me without a doubt?”
Blank stare, then… “You need to have more faith son.”
“So no explanation or scriptures are needed for basic fundamental teachings anymore, just faith and conjecture?”
Deer in the headlight look.
He gets up, tells me he loves me in a way that really means goodbye and leaves.
I’m surprisingly calm as he walks down the stairs. I knew it was always going to end like this whether it be today or in a year from now.
As he walked down the steps it just occurred to me that the JW gossip mill would be in overdrive as soon as they got home. Like most dubs, my mum loved hearing and spreading juicy gossip. She also loves having something physically or emotionally affect her so much she can have an excuse to miss meetings and field service whenever she wants. I had just given her the best reason ever – her son was now apostate.
So I raced down the stairs and got to the car just before Dad gets in. I ask him to give me a few days to let my close friends know I’m no longer a witness. That I’d rather tell them myself, instead of them hearing it second hand.
He agreed. In fact, he said he wouldn’t tell a soul about me, but he couldn’t give the same promise about my mum.
Then they drove off, never to be seen again.
First thing my mum does when she gets home is tell absolutely everybody. She must have revelled in the sympathy. She had her health problems (real and made up), a husband that was going to leave her at Armageddon and now her only child left in the cult had turned apostate so she would be all alone in the spew system.
Like I said, I’d feel sorry for her if she was a normal loving mum.
But what kind of mother shuns her own flesh and blood just because they believe in something different, especially after looking at all the proof?
What kind of a mother races out and tries to get her son disfellowshipped when I told her we are just going to quietly fade away and we could still have amicable non-religious contact?
What kind of a mother can give up on someone she birthed and raised and loved her whole life… just like that?
Also what kind of a mother can justify shunning one of her sons yet still keeps in contact with her other son and daughter, even though they are as much out of the cult as I am?!? Just because they have her grandkids she somehow justifies it is ok. We can’t have kids, and so because of that medical anomaly we’re cut off.
The hypocrisy leaves me speechless and disgusted
My dad. Well he’s just waiting to die so he can go to heaven anyway so he’s already disengaged from everyone and everything. It’s very weird and I don’t know how to explain it any better than that.
So anyways the gossip mill runs overtime and close friends hear about us before I could even contact them. 40+ years of friendships are gone… poof… just like that. Friends we’d grown up with, camped with, travelled overseas with, pioneered with, worked alongside at assemblies into all hours of the night with, ate with, drank with, danced with, laughed with, cried with… all gone.
The thing that pisses me of the most about my really good ‘friends’ is that they wouldn’t even listen to my side of the story. Once they knew I didn’t believe anymore, that was it, I was dead meat to them.
Over the years I had many in-depth discussions with elders, missionaries, CO’s, bethelites and even branch overseers, a lot of them were close friends. All of them had questions and doubts. Every single one of them. Most of my good friends were well travelled and not naïve. I liked that about them. They weren’t just dub-bots like most elders. When you have lived in or travelled to third world countries you know that there is no way the preaching work is going to reach everyone in the world the way JWs are doing it. How on earth is a family living in the slums of Bangladesh going to be able to read a Watchtower, let alone find one, and get the truth?
So most of them made up some alternative viewpoint to justify things to themselves like God massacring billions at Armageddon.
One conclusion some of us came to was that when the Jews exited Egypt, an untold number of non-Jews went with them because they actually saw proof of God in real life, with their own eyes. That’s what made them believers… not some magazine offered to you while you’re half asleep on a Saturday morning that talks about smoking. We thought that God could finally reveal himself somehow in the great tribulation, and people would see he is real, then maybe it could be a parallel to the Egyptian exodus. That would at least be the loving thing to do… and it has a biblical precedent. Either way none of my thinking friends believed the current teaching would happen.
When I called them on this I said that because they don’t agree with the current societies teaching as far as Armageddon then they are just as much an apostate as I was. A little bit or a lot is still apostasy by their own definition.
One of my best friends, who is also a coordinator of a congregation, is very dismayed about the overlapping generation teaching, the tele-evangelist videos, the child abuse cover-ups in Australia, the lies told at the RC, the liability put on elders and the begging for money among other things. He told me straight to my face that he thinks the current governing body has apostatised and Jehoober is going to step in soon and clean it all up… we just have to stick it out and wait on him to make changes in his organisation.
WTF!?!
And he was the first one of my mates to shun me!!!
Every single one of my thinking ‘friends’ had one or more of these concerns. Yet all their doubts and concerns about the society and different teachings that were shared with me over countless beers and scotches now mystically disappeared. When I brought up prior conversations we had had, they conveniently forgot.
That pissed me off the most as we were leaving!
So to my so called friends that did that to me… FUCK YOU!
To our friends that just blindly listened to the rumours my mum spread and didn’t even have the decency to call us up and confirm it after all our years of friendship… FUCK YOU!
To my family that dumped us and treat us like we never even existed… FUCK YOU!
To the Governing Body that enables all of this disgusting unscriptural shunning to continue… FUCK YOU!
FUCK ALL OF YOU!!!
Man that felt good
So now we’re moving on with our lives. We’re excited, nervous and still feel a little lost at the moment.
I haven’t posted much because we decided we had better get a jump on sorting out our life, seeing we were actually going to be retired one day. We bought our first house a couple of months ago and are now knee deep in renovations which are keeping us busy (a good thing). We held off buying for such a long time as the spew system was “just around the corner”. We would never have bought a house like this one as it would have taken way too much time away from the cult. We have a beautiful garden and lawn and amazing views from our front and back decks. We’re very excited about it. I actually enjoy doing the yard work and love being a home owner. Now to just fix it all up to how we want it and pay it off before we retire.
Having something to focus on and keep us busy while we were in transition of losing all our friends has been very helpful for us.
I have been growing our business too and it’s a wonderful free feeling of being able to do that without dubtards judging you for being materialistic. Having all that extra time in the week helps too. I still kick myself when I think of all the time I wasted as a cult member!
This year we celebrated our first birthdays. It felt weird being the first time in our lives, and with only the two of us. But was fun to do it, even if it only was for defiance and a fuck you to the Watchtower J I kept joking that if there was a beheading on my birthday it would be a sign from god. Nothing on the day… but later that week we turned on the news and there had sadly been a beheading in Syria. Weird and eerie. But if it was God behind it he was late again as always.
We also had our first Christmas with my sister and my nieces. We went a bit overboard with the presents but it was really fun. My sister had left many years ago but was still mentally trapped… I’ll talk about her in a minute.
This month was the first time I bought an Easter egg too. There was a JW working at the store and I wanted him to see me so I bought the biggest one I could find and put it on the top of the basket Fun to do but I discovered Easter egg chocolate sucks so I most likely won’t bother again. I’d rather just get a good block of chocolate instead. Plus he didn’t see me so I missed out on that bit of a fun stir.
Back to my sister. One of the first things I wanted to make sure of was whether my sister and brother were fully mentally out. My brother was totally out and had read most of jwfacts.com. But sadly, after 10+ years of being physically out, my sister was still mentally trapped by the Watchtower teachings and the guilt we had pummelled into us growing up. It broke my heart to think she had carried this around with her for so long, living her life in some horrible sort of JW-exJW limbo. So I sent her my research and got her free asap. It felt great being able to do that for her. She didn’t actually believe me at first that we had left, we were that deep into it. She thought I was trying to trick her
We’ve become very close to my brother and sister these last 12 months and that has brought a lot of joy to us all. The weird thing is that my parents haven’t mentioned a thing about us not being dubs to them. We have a running bet to see how long they can hold off for.
So now I have reconnected with my “worldy” brother and sister and we are having a blast celebrating all the holidays we couldn’t as kids. They don’t really mean anything to us as adults now, but it’s awesome seeing my brand new nephew and two nieces growing up outside of the cult influence and doing normal things kids should get to experience.
Mrs Stumpy has always been close to her non-JW sister and that relationship has just become stronger too.
Despite what the dubs will have you believe about marriage being impossible without Jehoober as the third cord, we have found exactly the opposite. With more time on our hands without the pressure and guilt to force us to do pointless time wasting cult activities, we have grown even closer, which if you knew us you would think that’s not possible.
We have started to build up a network of friends and are enjoying being ourselves with them. Mrs Stumpy said on the weekend, after having coffee with a new couple we just met, that it felt so good being able to just listen to what they had to say without thinking about how you could tie in the cult to the conversation.
We’ve decided to be open with people and just tell them we have left a cult. The reactions have all been positive and people seem to be fascinated to talk about it. Then when we talk it out its done, no big deal. They don’t judge us at all like we were worried about.
Life is good outside the cult. I can’t wait to see what lies ahead in the future for us… either way it will be free of religion.
Today has been a good day. We just got two invitations from our new friends. People are accepting us and they are so nice and genuine… unlike the so called “friends” we thought we had.
Also today I finally obtained the last piece of literature I needed to complete my collection that proves the society is full of shit – an original unmarked 96 year old copy of the brochure ‘Millions Now Living Will Never Die’. It’s the prize piece in my collection. A collection of original prints that will always be around no matter when or how the society decides to destroy all its old literature in the KH libraries (and it will happen one day). It’s going to go up in my office in a glass case to preserve it and to remind me to never fall for or be controlled by stupid shit or stupid people ever again… to always question everything… and to always remember that it’s far better to live life with questions that can’t be answered rather than live with answers that can’t be questioned.
We’re not hiding and we don’t give a shit about anything JW’s will try to do to us anymore. We’re done and are never going back! EVER!
We’re finally free!!!
By the way, my name starts with 'G' and my wife’s name starts with 'K'. I don't want to put our full names out there for privacy reasons to do with my work. We have lived in Canada, Australia, and South America over the past 20 years. 'K' lived in the UK for a few years before we were married.
If you're awake and think you know us, send us a message. We’d love to hear from you. There’s enough info in this post for any awake friends we may have to recognise us.
Now to go and live our life…
