It's interesting and good to see how well people are doing.
For me. I was totally traumatized at first. Then I was really angry.
If I knew what I know now as a young person, it may have been better but when you learn it at 64...well, you feel as if someone stole your life and you have so many, many regrets.
So, here I am now at 65 still struggling to keep my financial head above water when people my age are enjoying their retirement and mostly because I was never given a chance to be educated and have a career of any sort. I was never allowed to question anything and I was so completely indoctrinated by the time I reached adulthood that every single thing in my life from then on was governed by the WT. I was constantly waiting for that 'just around the corner' new world.
But I think I was most angry because my faith was taken. I read in a book once that the WT 'smashes through peoples faith' and that is so true.
So now I am at a point where, in order to make sense of it all, I am trying to look back on a life in the religion and find the good bits and there were good bits. Pioneering at 16 was fun, attending conventions and volunteering and meeting people was fun, too. Spending time with the 'anointed' was a respite from my difficult home life. I enjoyed being with those elderly and very kind people they were lovely to me. I also never smoked and although my childhood wasn't happy and I envied my school mates who were allowed so much freedom, two of them became drug addicts and one was pregnant at 14...so maybe it protected me too, who knows?
And, if I hadn't been in the religion and my husband hadn't come into it we would never have met and the children...they would never have been born. So as I work hard to come to terms with the shock of being lied to and the anger that followed, I am working hard to look back and see there was some good that came of it as well.
But the very best thing about leaving the WT, and this comes about after a year of intense sessions with a psychologist, is the clarity of mind. I quite literally feel as if my mind was once chained up in a cage and now it is set free. I can't even explain how good that feels. I see things so clearly now. I am no longer beating myself up for being a miserably bad JW, I no longer control my facial expressions when I see something bad on TV for fear Satan can see that something scares me (yes, I really did that?) and will use that fear to get me.
I know most JWs are lovely people and victims just like I was and now I want to find a way to help people get out.
I am learning to be a nicer person and I am happier than I have ever been and learning to adapt to life outside the WT.
I also have made some incredibly lovely new friends via this forum which has been wonderful.