hey guys.
a friend online asked me about my recovery and how i managed to recover relatively easily from watchtower indoctrination.
although i think a major part of it is acquainting oneself with information about the watchtower and it's history, a lot of it (for me at least) was an inner game.
So beautifully written, Pale Emperor.
My husband and I have just read it together and it has helped us both so much. I'm going to save it so that we can keep reading it.
Thank you so much. If only the Watchtower knew how much they'd lost, when they lost you.
i mailed the below letter to my mother a few weeks ago.
i did share it on the ex-jw facebook group but thought i'd post it here.. basically, she's shunned me since day 1, has little or nothing to do with my 3yo daughter and told my sister "i hope <my daughter> becomes a jw when she's older so i can welcome her into the family".
well, that was the last straw for me..
That's a powerful letter and it must have been a cathartic experience to write it.
.One day, I want to write something very similar to my evil brother and sister (elder/pioneer)
I think I might be sort of in your neck of the woods btw. Well, not that far away, anyway,
They say the best revenge for leaving the Watchtower is to be happy.
So I wish you - and you daughter - all the happiness in the world. You deserve it.
why do elders ask such perverted questions during judicial meetings?
kinda creeped me out, actually creeped me out a lot.
.
I was reading this thread and I have a story to tell about this.
Back in the late 70s, a young sister I knew committed fornication with her boyf - once. Riddled with guilt, she confessed to the elders. Brought in front of a JC. She was early 20s and the three elders - one in his 40s, two elderly. One of the elderly bros had recently lost his special pioneer daughter in road accident.
The questions they asked her. I couldn't put them on here. She said she was sobbing her heart out and they were interrogating her with the most disgusting questions. They wanted a minute by minute detailed description of everything. They even wanted to know (why?) what kind of underwear she was wearing!
She wasn't DF but get this, three months after her JC the elder in his 40s was DF. The whole time he was interrogating her at her JC, he was sleeping with another brother's wife! And one of the other elders, the one who had lost his daughter, came up to her after a meeting and said it was her that should have been killed in a car accident not his lovely daughter who was strong in the truth -- unlike her. My friend ran out of the hall crying.
My friend left that congregation as soon as she could and never came back.
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/.
Really enjoyed listening to it!
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
Congratulations! She is so precious.
xxxx
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.
Love reading your story...more please..
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).
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.
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.
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.
