Posts by Phoebe

9

Episode 5 of This JW Life is live - Enter the FOG - The Culture of Jehovah's Witnesses

by dubstepped in

episode 5 of the podcast is now up.

i will take you into the fog, tell you what it means, and explain it in the context of the jw culture.

i also use another known cult model and show how it applies, along with some of my own stories thrown in.. http://thisjwlife.com/episode-5-enter-the-fog-the-culture-of-jehovahs-witnesses/.

chasing me for a report

by Phoebe in

jw
friends

i'm fairly new on here and i've told a lot of my story but to recap, after 60 odd years i've stopped going to the meetings.

my husband had already left the truth years ago and my children didn't become jws.(phew!).

i had a horrendous childhood growing up as a witness which included sexual assault by a close relative, also a jw.

Phoebe

Hi everyone,

I just want to say thank you to you all for your love, support, advice and virtual hugs.

You have no idea how much it means to me to get this kind of support and advice from all of you.

I will take on board everything you have said and follow your good advice.

As it happens I bumped into the same elder in town yesterday (My town is very small pop 2,400) after his wife hugged me and said we miss you, the elder kept on and on at me 'so when are you coming back?. ' we will see you at the meetings again soon?' I deflected all his questions and even as I said good by he continued on as I walked away 'so, you'll be at the meeting soon, then?'

I felt so pressurized by him but I although I consider myself a fairly meek and mild person, I am a quite determined person and I will not be going back. As someone once said 'when the bell has rung, how can you un-ring it?' Knowing what we've found out how could anyone go back, unless it's for family reasons.

I suspect I will continue to be harassed, although not by the elders I first went to as neither of them seem to have the guts. They send this elder - their lackey.

Thank you all for having my back...you maybe virtual friends but you've already all show me more compassion that a life time of being a JW.

xxx

23

chasing me for a report

by Phoebe in

jw
friends

i'm fairly new on here and i've told a lot of my story but to recap, after 60 odd years i've stopped going to the meetings.

my husband had already left the truth years ago and my children didn't become jws.(phew!).

i had a horrendous childhood growing up as a witness which included sexual assault by a close relative, also a jw.

Phoebe

I'm fairly new on here and I've told a lot of my story but to recap, after 60 odd years I've stopped going to the meetings. My husband had already left the truth years ago and my children didn't become JWs.(phew!)

I had a horrendous childhood growing up as a witness which included sexual assault by a close relative, also a JW. This past year through counseling I confronted that person by letter with the full support of my elders who, I thought were going to have my back. Turns out I was wrong. After a few weeks they suddenly didn't want to know me. Refused to talk to me about it and one even ran away from me in the supermarket. I know what's happened. My abuser is an elder in another congregation and no doubt the branch was contacted and my elders were told to drop it. Well, that was the final nail in the coffin for me. I had bravely lay bare the thing that had ruined my life and all but destroyed me and my elders, who knew all the gory details because I told them everything, abandoned me. I decided then and there, I'd had enough and stopped going.

But get this....for the past 3 months...at the end of the month they send another elder round the house or he rings me up - for my report!!!

They don't want to know me. Don't care about me and yet they bug me for a report at the end of each month!

I told the elder they send that he's aware I'm not attending meetings so it's pretty obvious I'm not reporting. He is such a nice elder and he always says to me 'they get on my back if I don't do ask.' I feel sorry for him.

I do not want to DA because I'm not giving them that final power over me. But how do I handle this?

45

She's here and early! 27 weeks 1day.

by Darkknight757 in

so as of july 2nd my wife delivered by c-section our little one pound, three ounce daughter izabella.

it was a very scary night that started with a decel and turned into multiple decels that greatly concerned the doctors.

by early morning they felt the need to take her for her safety.

Phoebe

Congratulations! She is so precious.

xxxx

46

On the Subject of Demons, I Have a Story to Tell.

by snugglebunny in

i have posted the full story on a fb site.

so my apologies to anyone who's already read it.

some of what i've written is what was told to me by my father.

Phoebe

Love reading your story...more please..

24

Last Memorial Experiences

by NoviceLocs14 in

i'll share mine first.... i had never missed a memorial for at least a quarter of a century of my life.

i was kind of raised to believe that missing the memorial was a sin in itself.. by 2013 memorial season, i was missing most of my meetings (even though i was still technically part of my foreign language congregation), and i had just come off the pioneer list.

i still made plans to attend the memorial (god forbid if i missed that lol).. i knew that typically our memorials were around 9 pm, since we usually got last priority (being a foreign language hall and all).

Phoebe

I agree with Zeb. Everyone is looking to see who is or who isn't there.

I was raised to believe even if you left the truth, you came back for the memorial and the day you gave that up, well, that was it.... you had truly gone over to the dark side.

I've been to over 60 memorials, I've hunted down K.Halls on holidays that coincided with memorials. I have never missed one, but I don't think I'll be going next year. That is something I never thought I'd say!

I'll tell you a story to highlight how pathetic some witnesses are about memorials.

One year I persuaded my son and husband to go to the memorial (husband had left the truth, my son studying at the time) but they didn't feel comfortable going to my congregation so we went to one in another area.

A few weeks later my son was invited out for a drink in a local pub by a brother he knew quite well. When he walked into the pub he noticed a bunch of witnesses he knew from my congregation put down their drinks, get up, give him a filthy stare and march out together. He thought that's odd but thought nothing else of it. Until a few days later when the brother he was having a drink with called up to apologise for their behaviour. Apparently, they assumed my son hadn't attended a memorial and when they heard he was meeting this brother for a drink decided to go over en masse to the pub and to deliberately WALK OUT as he came in to make a POINT that they were disgusted he didn't attend the memorial (which of course, he did)

How utterly pathetic is that??? In a way they did us a favour because my son was so shocked and disgusted, he stopped his study.

8

Rick Simmons or Irwin Zalkin- Who should I call

by AbusedandPissed in

hi there i am new to this and want to get some advice.

i think i was abused as a child by someone in a hall in central california a long time ago.

i have been seeing on here for a while, two names keep popping up to get help.

Phoebe

AbusedandPissed

Are you saying 'think' because you are not sure it warrants the term 'abuse' What I mean to say is, I was sexually assaulted twice but I kept convincing myself 'it wasn't that bad' because I was in denial. It was when I related the abuse to my husband and friend who said yes, I was seriously sexually abused.

I'm just wondering if you are thinking maybe it wasn't deemed 'abuse'? You need someone to talk to about it. Trust me if anyone has done anything inappropriate to you as a child - it's abuse.

also, take the above info from Drearyweather.

45

What did NOT get you out?

by problemaddict 2 in

i realize this is odd, but a "how you woke up" thread and the personal stories that are told which i know we all enjoy, made me think of this.

in helping my wife and a couple others get the ball rolling, i realized the thing that resonated with me, didn't even move the needle with them.

i wanted to rail on and on about blood, because that was my conduit to waking up, but for my wife it was about shunning.

Phoebe

I didn't leave for most of the reasons people seem to have left. In my mind I justified all the the things my husband was telling me about the organization.

UN? they made a mistake. 607/1914? Maybe it's a matter of having faith in God on this one. Shunning? Leave it to Jehovah.

I could pretty much explain away anything to myself because I wasn't prepared to think it wasn't 'the truth' As far as I could see, I was one hell of a lucky lady to have been born into the one true religion. I wasn't breaking for anything!! I'd faced childhood abuse, you name it and I was not giving up. I was Rahab and I was going to save my family!

What loosened my brick was a talk on the broadcast.

I had ALWAYS believed that no matter what happened in my life, God would fix it. I even had a piece of the WT taped on my computer about how God is obligated to take care of his people. Then I saw a talk, think it might have been morning worship talk - can't remember. The brother said God lets you go through things. He let Jacob suffer the agonising pain of losing his son and all the while he could have said 'hey, Jacob. Don't worry. He's not really dead.'

Suddenly, I realised no, he isn't always going to be there for me. What was I thinking? Brothers went to concentration camps? Where was God? It's weird but I suddenly felt very alone.

About this time, I kept hearing 'It isn't all about you, you know. You have to see the bigger picture.' So many times that got mentioned in talks and answers. 'It's not all about you!'

It was silly, I know now. But through my life of so many hardships including suffering sexual and emotional abuse, my one constant was God and now the organization had ripped it away from me. They had made me see, God didn't have my back after all.

Then I really began to notice the lack of love and compassion among the brothers. People didn't care about each other unless you were part of their clique. If you were suffering in anyway, the most you'd get is 'I'll pray for you.'

I knew I could drop dead in my hall and no one would notice. But to me, it didn't matter because I had Jehovah with me and they took that away from me by saying, nope, you know what. He's going to let you suffer. It's not all about you. I know it sounds daft but I had so much faith God would be there for me - always.

Suddenly, my bricks came tumbling down.

So, if any of you has a JW family that are still in and you think they'll never wake up, be patient. If I can leave after 50 years, anyone can. The right brick just has to be loosened a little bit and it can be in ways you haven't thought of.

71

Wow i do not reconize this religion anymore...

by _Morpheus in

had the misfortune of stopping by the "regional" convention yesterday.

i promised my daughter i would come to sunday afternoon so she wouldnt have to ride home with her mother.... holy crap it was weird!

im sure all of this has been covered on the forum but to actually see it.... just wow.

Phoebe

I share your shock. That was me last year. My first convention for ages. I was looking for the platform and flowers, remember years back people could buy the flowers after the convention. I said 'where's the platform?' My friend said 'we don't have one anymore, it's all on video.'

Then we stood up to sing and I thought wow, everyone knows the words until my friend nudged me and pointed to the karaoke style video they were all singing from.

The music has gone all poppy. I remember decades ago being at Twickenham and one of The Shadows (the band) had come into the truth and he jazzed up a lot of the songs and they played them in the intervals and us kids thought they were brilliant but after the convention we were told 'THAT will not be happening again! It's disrespectful to Jehovah!' And now they are doing it and music videos too!

The walkways had people and tables with card machines so you could make donations.

I was just so shocked at how it had changed.

41

Some prayers really annoy me

by stillin in

i realize that prayer is a really personal thing, but representing a group in prayer has become so full of cliche's that i just want to vomit sometimes.

co week almost every prayer has the phrase "special week of activity" in it.. then there's "please look after the sick and afflicted.".

not so much anymore, "please bless this food and the hands that prepared it.".

Phoebe

'Interchange of encouragement' is one we hear a lot of.

We had a brother whose whole prayer was one long string of cliches.