being new here i am curious how many menbers are on this site?
is it a few hundred or we looking at thousands.
im amazed i put up a post 30min ago and already 13 replies!
Actually there is only just me..I have 25,000 multiple accounts..I talk to myself all day..Write questions,answer them,then applaud myself for being so smart..Sometimes I argue with myself.Gave myself a black eye the other day.I wasn`t going to take any of my crap!..LOL!!...OUTLAW
ROFL! Go YOU! errr... I mean, Go ME!!! err.. something like that.
no, i'm not talking about being gay, although if i was, i'd come out about that too.
no, i'm talking about coming public about having been a jw and explaining why i feel the jw is a dangerous cult.. now, i don't have a huge readership on my blog, but i've never talked about my jw past to anyone outside of that organization or this board.
i would love to hear any advice from those who have been out and successfully dealing with the mental and emotional abuse that the jw poured out.
nice to hear that Abandoned , lovely story, i like poetry and English as well, but not very good at it.
If you like poetry, I bet you'd do just fine. Don't worry about what anyone else says is poetry or isn't poetry. That's so subjective. When Emily Dickenson was alive, her style of poetry was looked down upon. Still, she wrote what she loved and today, people are still affected by her beautiful words, even though most of her poems weren't released until after she died.
In 2004, my wife left me. We'd been having problems for a long time and so instead of getting sad and felling bad, I decided to take this incident as a chance to make some major changes. I started praying again, which I'd all but stopped after leaving the jw. At that time I was still haunted by intense feelings of worthlessness. Anyway, I had wanted to be writer for a long time so I decided to start writing. My early work is horrendous. I'm still no Emily Dickenson, but I'm a lot better and I love writing more than just about any other activity.
What I found out by JUST WRITING was that after awhile I improved and then I started getting compliments for my writing. I've won a number of contests and I'm confident that I've found my voice. I don't know whether this confidence has made it possible for me to finally deal with this jw nonsense or if leaving jw is what lead to me finding the confidence to pursue my dreams, but I've learned that my dreams matter and that I have permission to follow them. I've learned that God is secure enough to allow me to do the things I love without feeling guilty for not pursuing "his interests."
So, if you want to write, or paint, or act, or make funny faces at people who pass by you on the bus, DO IT! Enjoy it! Have fun. Smile while you do it and see how infectious a smile can be. I've learned a lot since I've left the jw and now I'm finally losing the guilt and sense of worthlessness. It's taken four years, and I'm glad that I decided to follow my writing dreams while recovering.
no, i'm not talking about being gay, although if i was, i'd come out about that too.
no, i'm talking about coming public about having been a jw and explaining why i feel the jw is a dangerous cult.. now, i don't have a huge readership on my blog, but i've never talked about my jw past to anyone outside of that organization or this board.
i would love to hear any advice from those who have been out and successfully dealing with the mental and emotional abuse that the jw poured out.
Just read your blog. No wonder your letter was fluent - you write poems, etc.
That is very interesting. What kind of work do you do? You may PM if you want.
And you live in Rochester, MN. - home of the Mayo Clinic. I'm near Madison, WI so we both have the cold and snow to get through!
Yep, I live in Rochester, home of the Clinic. I work at a restaurant and a coffee shop. I used to work with Alzeimer's residents. If you read back a bit in my blog, to the story titled A Modern Day Fairy Tale, you can see the story behind why I left that job.
I don't think I'd still be alive if it weren't for my writing. It's the one thing that's always been there for me when my feelings of worthlessness were at their worst. I love poems and stories and songs and anything related to writing - well ALMOST anything related to writing.
no, i'm not talking about being gay, although if i was, i'd come out about that too.
no, i'm talking about coming public about having been a jw and explaining why i feel the jw is a dangerous cult.. now, i don't have a huge readership on my blog, but i've never talked about my jw past to anyone outside of that organization or this board.
i would love to hear any advice from those who have been out and successfully dealing with the mental and emotional abuse that the jw poured out.
Outlaw: You're welcome. :-)
no, i'm not talking about being gay, although if i was, i'd come out about that too.
no, i'm talking about coming public about having been a jw and explaining why i feel the jw is a dangerous cult.. now, i don't have a huge readership on my blog, but i've never talked about my jw past to anyone outside of that organization or this board.
i would love to hear any advice from those who have been out and successfully dealing with the mental and emotional abuse that the jw poured out.
Thanks again everyone. :-)
Outlaw: A blog is an online journal. A lot of them are public and available to anyone who has an internet account. Mine is located on myspace.com, but there are many different ones available.
i heard a new teaching from the public talk today that i'd never heard before.
the speaker asked a rhetorical question, asking if jehovah would be evil for killing 6 billion people during armageddon?
(yes, he actually said, killing 6 billion people) he then followed it up by saying 'yes!
I heard a talk with that as its theme quite a few years ago - that "evil" is technically anything unpleasant and/or destructive, but that doesn't necessarily make it "wrong" or "bad" - and that Jehovah is the author of evil.
Wasn't there a scripture that went something like, "woe to the one saying good is evil and evil is good." Oh darn, the governing body of hypocrites are going to have a dose of almighty whipass brought down on them. The only thing I have left to say then is, "can we buy tickets? Is this a sponsered event? Pay per view? Anything?"
our little princess turned one year old today!!!.
..... just wanted to share a photo of our pagan ritual with all my new friends.
plus, since i'm always the one behind the camera, there are very few pics of me.. ----- of course, my dad couldn't come.... after the invitation was sent, i didn't even bring it up.... it just breaks my heart!.
Damn!!! ... One eye and I STILL crack myself up!
And the rest of us too. Thanks! No matter what crap we go through or have gone through, laughter is the one thing that can take us away for awhile...
Oh, and here's another LMAO for thinking about Spiderman and looking ridiculous while on the verge of going half-blind. Kind of brings things into persective too, as now you'd only be half-blind instead of fully that way like you were before.
being new here i am curious how many menbers are on this site?
is it a few hundred or we looking at thousands.
im amazed i put up a post 30min ago and already 13 replies!
As a newbie administrator, I was surprised to see there are about a dozen new registrations a DAY. A few of them start posting. The others are....lurking? ...typos?
Then there's the people like me who came here for a number of months or longer, but didn't sign up until we were ready to talk.
are there any watchtower references to there being any members of the great crowd in the first century?...or were they all of the "144000" until 1935?
...
When I've raised this with a JW the reply is that "They really weren't "real" Christians. They just professed to be"
*cough* b*r*a*i*n*w*a*s*h*i*n*g *cough*
dear grown-up students,.
a lot of adults were influential in my formative years, but right now i'm thinking of how school teachers got me to where i am today.
it's one in particular to whom i owe the most.
Favorite teachers?
Elementary School: Mrs. Nye. I don't know remember her first name, but that's probably because I never knew it in the first place. She was my third grade teacher and she allowed one of my friends and myself put on a play in front of the rest of the class. It was cool. OH, and although it was HIGHLY based on Three Billy Goat's Gruff, we basically wrote it ourselves. :-)
HIgh School: Mr. Ed Anderson. He was my tenth grade math teacher. I don't know if he's still teaching as that was back in 1982, but he had such an awesome sense of humor that I looked forward to math class every day. Mr. Anderson wasn't into JOKES though, he liked to tell humorous stories. Most of his stories were about him when he was a kid or in college and such but a few of them were about his kids. Well, one of his kids was in my grade and I'm sure Lee was embarrassed every day over the things we learned about him. I don't know if I'd have been such a big fan of Mr. Anderson if I'd put myself in his son's place, but I did gain a HUGE love for math.
