Posts by Hopscotch

Just take your time and be patient and gentle with yourself. You don't need to figure it all out at once. Things will become clearer to you the more you read and then take some quiet time to think about what your learning. And as Baba Yagu says trust us - it will get better. You have been a witness for 30 years so it's a huge thing in your life to break free of it. It takes time to learn to trust your own thinking after having had an organisation doing it for you all your life. And what you think of as your conscience is most likely the guilt and fear that has been programmed and brainwashed into you to keep blindly following the directives of this organisation. I was a JW for over 40 years (from the age of 5) and my husband was an elder. Both our families are staunch JWs. But we gradually listened to the doubts and alarm bells that were going off in our head and eventually woke up to the lies that we had been told all our life. We have faded away from the organisation over the last 3 years or so and are still reading and learning about life and what it's all about.

Best wishes

Hopscotch

17

Any Aussies about?

by OlderTom in

how about dropping a line on the main board or e-mailing me.

we are organising another bbq and would like to invite you along.. oldertom.

pretty soon we'll have to organise warwick farm race cource for our assemblies.

Hopscotch

Hi wantstoleave

I'm a girl. Married with one son (19). The three of us got out together.

Hopscotch

17

Any Aussies about?

by OlderTom in

how about dropping a line on the main board or e-mailing me.

we are organising another bbq and would like to invite you along.. oldertom.

pretty soon we'll have to organise warwick farm race cource for our assemblies.

Hopscotch

Hi wantstoleave

I just posted on your I'm New thread and then saw this one. Where about are you. I'm in Queensland just north of Brisbane

Hopscotch

45

Im new....posting hesitantly :)

by wantstoleave in

hi everyone...i have a confession to make, i actually joined 5mths ago, but never came back to the site.

ive had doubt for a few years now.. my parents came into the truth when i was a toddler.

no other family members are witnesses.

Hopscotch

Hi wantstoleave

I just wanted to say to you that it's often a good idea to listen to that voice inside you - it really does know what to do. My husband and I had doubts for a long time but pushed them aside until a crisis occured in our life that made us sit up and listen. We wish now that we had listened to our doubts a lot sooner while we were a lot younger and before things reached crisis point.

You are still young and you deserve to be able to live the rest of your life in freedom not in limbo. You also have your little ones to think about - one of our greatest regrets is not leaving JWs while our son was young.

The WTS most powerful tools to keep you trapped in their organisation are fear and guilt. It is not easy leaving JWs when the rest of your family is still in but it can be done successfully. And if you read through the stories on here of those of us who have done this (and for some of us it has meant being shunned by our JW families) you will read time and again that the freedom to live our life our way and not under the mind control of the WTS is worth all the effort and in some cases pain that it takes to make the break.

Wishing you all the best

Hopscotch

58

What's in a name?

by dissed in

jw
friends

its friday, and you know what that means?.

its time for the weekly tradition of sharing what your name means and why you chose it.. there has to be a reason, and it must reveal to us something special about you.. sure this post has probably been run by the forum before, but many of us are new here, and 'by golly, we need to get to know you all better.'.

even if you are using your real name, why and the heck are you using it?

Hopscotch

I chose Hopscotch because it is the title of one of my favourite movies starring Walter Matthau and Glenda Jackson. The movie is about a CIA agent who gets tired of the lies and dirty tricks going on in the agency so he bucks the system. When his boss then tries to demote him he turns the tables on him and exposes some of the CIAs little secrets. It is a very clever and very funny movie. So I thought it was kind of an appropriate name then to use for someone who leaves the JWs and is helping expose their lies and dirty tricks.

Hopscotch

293

The Natural Beauty of Your Neighborhood

by compound complex in

jw
friends

dear friends,.

one of my greatest enjoyments is a daily walk.

i see things in far greater detail than when i am driving by.

Hopscotch

Last weekend my family visited the Lamington National Park in the hinterland behind the Gold Coast (Queensland Australia). After a barbeque lunch eaten while fending off the cheeky beautiful red and blue parrots that were trying to steal the food from our plates we decided to go on the forest treetops walk.

How innocent it all looks at the start as the boardwalk merges with the bridge two feet above the ground. I can do this easily I assure myself. But two feet above soon becomes ten then twenty and thirty and my steps slow to a crawl as my hands hold on to the wires with a vice like grip. The call of the catbird in this cool lush place is fleetingly acknowledged along with my son's call of "Don't look down, just keep going".

I briefly glance up and ahead only to see that this walk has even more terrors in store for me as the span ahead turns to the left and rises another ten and then fifteen feet about the safety of the leaf and fern covered forest floor.

But wait is that a solid platform just ahead. Yes. A minute to rest and allow my legs and arms to stop their quivering and a minute to enjoy this beautiful scenery around us. Looking out through the gaps in the treetops I see the mountains and hills in row after row reaching to the horizon. Those that are closest are green and tree covered but as my gaze reaches out further and further the mountains appear bluer and bluer until they seem to merge with the sky. I see the smoke from a few small bush fires wafting into the breeze.

But there are others coming now and it's time to move on from my little refuge.

Ever so slowly, one step at a time I press on valiantly. There is no going back now; it's one way only.

I am now at the highest point of the walk of terror, 45 feet in the air. Oh how can I possibly enjoy the beauty and splendour of this majestic ancient forest when I feel utterly compelled to keep my eyes looking down, searching for the slightest evidence of weakness in each paling of timber beneath my feet.

"Don't look down" my son continues to tell me. But it is futile. My eyes have a mind of their own and the only way they are going to look is down.

Oh why wasn't I born with wings that I could effortlessly glide from tree top to tree top instead of this clumsy dance I find myself doing.

Another glance ahead and miracles of miracles I am almost there. My legs start to carry me forward at a quicker pace, faster and faster they go in a frantic dash to the safety of the boardwalk. And all of a sudden, it's over.

"I can't believe I actually did it" I hear myself saying over and over. As my heart calms and my breathing slows I can resume my leisurely stroll taking in the majesty of strangler figs and oak trees that reach high into the sky. Look, there among the fallen trees and ferns is a family of little tree runners scratching about in the leaf litter. The terror of the treetop walk is soon forgotten as I deeply breathe in the fresh cool scented air of this ancient and sacred place. And as we near the end of this walk we are greeted by those beautiful noisy cheeky parrots that call this wonderful place their home.

The start of the treetops walk

View from the safety of the platform halfway through the walk

Up in the treetops.

Hopscotch

5

2009 Convention lie Nuclear War "Jehovah never wanted the earth destroyed" WRONG!

by Witness 007 in

question was asked "will jah allow the world to be destroyed by nuclear weapons?

" no he always wanted it "to be inhabited" "did not make it for nothing" as the bible says....um read the bible!

does jah contradict himself?

Hopscotch

Wobble Witnesses read Genesis like it's a "science manual."

What are Wobble Witnesses?

Hopscotch

PS - sorry just couldn't resist

23

Excerpts from '1984' by George Orwell--Part 1 (Warning to the impatient: DO NOT READ)

by sd-7 in

jw
friends

you folks play aggressively here, and i'm starting to understand why.

but let's not waste time.

life as one of jehovah's witnesses could accurately be described as an orwellian nightmare come to life.

Hopscotch

Thank you sd-7 for the time and effort you put into posting this for us.

As you say the likeness between the Party and Big Brother and the WTS is uncanny.

Due to the way my JW family has turned on me and is now shunning me these are the two quotes that stand out to me at the moment.

"....when the members of a family stood by one another without needing to know the reason."

and

"The family had become in effect an extension of the Thought Police. It was a device by means of which everyone could be surrounded night and day by informers who knew him intimately."

As many of us who have left JWs have found out the love shown to you even by your own family is very conditional. There is no standing by you no matter what. You are discarded like yesterdays trash even by your own parents or siblings and even worse your own children. And the second quote is so true, for in the JW world, family members are really spies of the organisation who are willing to turn in their own for the sake of 'the party'.

Hopscotch