my story part 2: trouble at bethel.
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[endif]by my third year at bethel i was really enjoying it and determined to make bethel a life career.
I've read both parts of your story so far, and they are such a great read.
Thank you so much for all you do with Freeminds and on here. Even though I left being a JW and made my peace with that decision far before I ever found any ex-JW material of any sort, what you do makes a difference for other JW's on the fence. The work you and others do I'm sure has helped many escape the cult. What an amazing gift you have given others with your efforts.
i have never done it and i would not do it ever.
the reason why i am asking all of you is because i am shocked that one of my classy facebook friends admitted making prank phone calls in the past.
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I think that was about the "worst" thing I ever did as a JW child. (Also before technology advances) My friend and I called the house of the boy behind us, and when his mom answered the phone we flushed the toilet and then hung up. We laughed about that for weeks. I think I was just as proud that my mom was in the house, and didn't know what we were doing. I thought we were so sneaky.
I agree, it is really childish, but, you know what? We were children at the time. I can't remember exactly how old, but it was either 5th or 6th grade.
do you remember the short little dresses small girls wore back then in the khall?
my mom wouldn't replace ours until they were very short on us.
she was very cheap.. when we sat down in a chair, it was very difficult to keep the skirt down far enough.. i remember getting slapped hard on bare skin several times because i couldn't keep my dress down when told to.
I was a child of the 70's, and my dresses were never short. They were all Little House on the Prairie clothes. Not just length-wise, but pattern wise. My aunt would sew all of my clothes, and even made matching prairie bonnets to go with some of them. I finally got out of the LHOP patterns when I was a teenager, but the length of my clothes carried over into my 20's.
does everyone remember a few years back, when the km directed that nobody should wear shorts after the convention while out and about?
i don't have the reference, but i remember a brother in our hall made a comment that night at the meeting while it was being discussed.
he was a very poor brother, with 3 children.
My absolute favorite (not) was when I went to the international convention in Moscow. I got Switzerland as the side tour, and even though the convention was over and we were in another country, the females all had to be in skirts or dresses wherever we went. Including our hike up the alps, which wasn't a lot of fun in a dress, by any means.
just wanted to start this to get a pulse on how many young jw's are exiting percentage wise recently in the witness organization.
in my family i have 8 young people aged 21 through 35 .
these are my son and two daughters and my older siblings 5 adult children.
Mr. Flipper, thank you for your kind wishes. I didn't really think of it until now, but today is the 12th anniversary of the day I walked out. (I walked out on my 25th birthday, which is why I love birthdays.) In that time, I've developed a wonderful network of friends, and have a loving and supporting husband and family of in-laws. While it may not be the quantity of what I had before, the quality of people are much better, and none of my relationships have conditions attached to them.
I tend to be quite interested in threads like these, because so many ex-JW's know of so many of those who left, and I know for a fact that all my family and friends I grew up with in the area are still in. I saw the Pew survey a few years ago that said something like 67% of JW children left, and I never would have believed that until I found ex-JW sites. I often wonder what it is about this area that the JW's have such a high retention rate around here.
just wanted to start this to get a pulse on how many young jw's are exiting percentage wise recently in the witness organization.
in my family i have 8 young people aged 21 through 35 .
these are my son and two daughters and my older siblings 5 adult children.
I am the only one in 3 generations on both my dad and mom's side of the family who have been JW's who have left. No, I take that back. I had a 2nd or 3rd cousin or something who got DF'ed far before I left. I never knew her, but everyone kept talking about her for several years after she left.
i'm trying to compare some statistics and figures on this to share later in the thread to see if more long-time witnesses are exiting- or are newer witnesses exiting after a shorter period of time.
and - are more people exiting in the last 10 to 15 years than before.
so your answers would be helpful in looking into this .
Born in. Walked out in 1998 on my 25th birthday.
i am asking this based on sd-7's posts and am curious what you consider fair as far as house upkeep in the position you are in.. i was raised in the 60/70 decades from parents married in the 1950's so i seem to have a pretty old fashioned idea of what "housewife" means.. when i was working i had no tolerance for any slop habits, but since i'm home i don't require much.. so what are your ideals, how does your home operate?
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r..
I stay at home. My husband usually works between 44 and 48 hours a week. I have one preschooler and one Kindergartner. I pretty much do all the cleaning and cooking. I think since I'm the one staying home I should bear the brunt of all the household chores. If my husband were the one who stayed home, then he should have to do them. He does small jobs around the house and cooks some meals. What I appreciate is the fact he takes the kids in the evening and plays with them, and is in charge of baths. I love my children to death, but by that point in the day, I'd rather have some peace and quiet while cleaning up after dinner than doing bath time. He also picks up the slack, chore-wise, if I'm sick. He does all the yardwork (I made it quite clear I don't do yardwork) and the bills, etc. I pretty much am in charge of the inside of the house, and running the non-paperwork household affairs.
The house is pretty clean. It has to be, we're trying to sell it, and you never know when to expect someone coming by to see it. (Although the housing market is soooo slow here, but that's another story.) I've found I just have to make myself keep up on the cleaning, and if I put in 1/2 hour to 45 minutes a day of cleaning, my house looks better than 99% of the houses we've looked at.
I think the important thing, is like palmtree67, he doesn't make me feel like it is my job to do all these things. When the kids and I decide to have a do nothing and play all day kind of day, he never makes me feel guilty for not doing much but playing with them all day. He is also appreciative of what I do, and we both know his going to work and being the boss is very stressful, etc. it isn't like staying at home all day with two small children is a walk in the park. I think we both respect what the other does and realize that some days are harder than others for both of us, and one of us always picks up the slack for the other when it has been a long day.
i had a message left on my cell phone letting me know about the memorial on tuesday night.
it was some local elder whom i've never met.
i can only guess that he got my cell number from my oldest brother.. i found it rather condescending the way he actually described to me what the memorial was, as if i'd never attended one before.
My husband found that waste of paper upside down on our doormat. I doubt it was from anyone I know, just their normal door-to-door campaign. It was the first time in 3 1/2 years of living here that I've found evidence of any JW activity in the neighborhood, which I find interesting as there are a decent amount of them around here, and this would be a very easy territorry to work as there are sidewalks, a ton of houses close together and it is in fairly close proximity to the KH.
i figured that after reading the suicide thread through, we need a more positive thread.. so what makes you happy?
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Sitting on the couch with my husband and kids reading a book, or just something where we're all close and together. And cookies. Cookies make me inordinately happy.
