i was a jw for years, and i constantly run into old "friends" at the store, gym, doctor's, cinema, etc.
up to now, i have just looked the other way because i knew they couldn't talk to me.. but after reading some posts here - i realized that i was contributing to their shunning.
acting like i was still under their law - well no more!!.
I am shunned even though I am not officially df or da. But it is common knowledge that I go to a church. Some people do say hello how are you, but you can see in their eyes that it bothers them. Others run from me. Those are the ones I follow around, just happening to run in to them again and again. they just keep running from me,I just can't help myself.
Pam
i was at a wedding last summer were i met an old friend.
he had been reinstated for 6 months, he was dfed for 4 years.. he had been an elder for 10 years before that, he had commited adultery with another "brothers" wife.
i asked him how it was going.
Many years ago I was disfellowshipped when I was 19, two years later I was 21 and pregnant. I needed my family to help me. So I worked at getting reinstated. I was 6 months pregnant when I was got back in. How did the congregation react? Some people were so angry that they couldn't look at me for years. Others went to my sister and said I should not have been reinstated because I wasn't pregnant enough. I have never figured out what that meant. I guess they thought I should have my baby first. I tried hard for years to be the perfect jw single mom, I was never good enough. When another woman named Pam started coming to the hall, no one could remember my name, they were always calling me by her name. I who grew up in that cong, was not important. After I got in trouble a 2nd time, (put on reproof) then I became totally invisible. Now I have been gone about 6 years and no one remembers me.
Pam
is it just me, or is it very difficult to be a single ex?
there are questions boyfriends ask about my family, why i dont have contact with them, and what did i do to gain their utter disfavor?
why do i put up with what men tell me to believe?
I understand what you are saying. I don't even try to have a relationship. I wouldn't want to introduce any one I was interested in to my family. The jw members of my family are all nuts. What could I say? "Oh, I don't want you to met my mom, she would just preach at you?" "My family has no touch with reality?"
Of course, she would probably give him a good dose of old jw snobbery. Not something I would like to see. I figure I will be single for a long, long time.
Pam
responsible childbearing in this time of the end .
i heard the talk that formed the basis of this article in the summer of 1987 while attending with my pregnant wife.
the stress was on not having children and devoting lives to preaching the watchtower's message.
When I had my oldest son, my mom said "hopefully he will never have to go to school. He is 18 now, my youngest son is 10. My mom used to say that after everyone of her grandbabies were born. (She has 13 of them ages 21-1). She stopped saying that when the last ones were born. I haven't heard those words come out of her mouth in a long time. She has been waiting for over 30 years. I wonder if she ever thinks it might not happen?
i sometimes ask myself this question - i think i was 'there' for nearly 40 years and wonder at the waste.. what good came from it?
.
did anyone really find some good in all of the things we did?
I learned to speak in front of groups of strangers and not be scared. That is the one thing I can say was good about my experiences. So in college I am always one of the first to volunteer to do something in front of the class. (Okay, so I like to show off.)
Pam
what gives these duds aren't doing their house to house work properly.
this is twice with in two months that the dubs have pass me by , why?.
i just moved to las vegas this past year no body knows my address or that i was daed or dfed.. it is like there is a sign that says apostate lives here.. what you think?
I used to do that. Walk around a couple of blocks pushing my son in a stroller, and only go to houses that you knew were empty. I worked alone alot, I wasn't good enough to have a partner, or I would have someone's kid with me. And since neither of us wanted to go to the door, the kid never cared if we skipped houses. Walk real slow, put in about 40 minutes and then go get a donut. The last time a jw came to my house, the woman didn't even know me. I was still going to meetings then, and she had never seem me. I grew up in the local congregation. I felt so unimportant. And they wonder why I never go back.
Pam
i was once counselled by the elders for watching 'knots landing'....it became widely known in the congregation that me and a few other sisters would rush home from field service to watch our favourite soapie.
if we missed it, we would ring each other up for an update...or...if we weren't near a tv we would ask someone to put the phone handset on the top of their tv so we could hear it...pathetic huh...but that was all the excitement we could scrounge up in our otherwise dull and uneventful lives.
one of the elder's wive's conscience got the better of her...and she confessed to her husband..lol.
My sister and some other girls were dragged before the elders for talking to boys at an assembly (they were about 16). They were all in a group over lunch just talking. The boys' mother didn't think they girls should talk to her sons. She thought her sons were too good to talk to those girls.
Never could figure out what harm talking in public could do. Those boys grew up to be real winners. One molests children, the other sells drugs.
Pam
i was once counselled by the elders for watching 'knots landing'....it became widely known in the congregation that me and a few other sisters would rush home from field service to watch our favourite soapie.
if we missed it, we would ring each other up for an update...or...if we weren't near a tv we would ask someone to put the phone handset on the top of their tv so we could hear it...pathetic huh...but that was all the excitement we could scrounge up in our otherwise dull and uneventful lives.
one of the elder's wive's conscience got the better of her...and she confessed to her husband..lol.
When my son was just little I was talked to all the time about spanking him. They felt I didn't do it enough, or I did it too much. I could never get it right. Then later, when I got married (to a non jw), they showed up just long enough to ask if I had sex before we were married. I said no. If they only knew we were living together at the time, didn't get married for 5 more months. They never came back after that. I guess since they thought they could not df me, I was not important enough to talk to again. Now they just consider me a non person, an invisible has been. I like it that way.
Pam
went to my grandfather's funeral service at the kingdom hall today.
two or three minutes were spent on grandfather, and the rest on the bible, jehovah, how sin makes our bio cells degenerate, etc.
etc.. fortunately, i'm well past the stage of anger at the witnesses for shoving their religious beliefs down my throat.
The same thing happened when my grandmother died. My mom had me write up her story for the elder that was giving the talk. He made me so mad, he used what I wrote as a stepping stone into his sermon. And other people were stupid enough to think I wrote about her that way. I am not df or da, but I was shunned anyway. I arrived with my sons and my then worldly husband. Held my head high, and glared back at the ones who couldn't bring themselves to talk to me.
I am so sorry for you loss.
Pam
listed below are a few of the quotes offered by wt about the terrible abuse problem in the catholic church.
i missed the last qoute from the june 2001 issue of awake!
i wonder now if they will give equal time to themselves?.
My mother tried to say something about that not long ago. She was acting like nothing like that ever happened in the society of so called brothers.
I had to remind her that the brothers convinced her to stay married to a molester, and wouldn't allow her to protect her children. She looked at me with her mouth open. She somehow just doesn't remember all the abuse my sisters and I went through. Why? Because Jehovah hates a divorce.
This kind of stuff makes me so angry, I can hardly see to type.
Pam
