Dear Lew;
Thanks for your feedback on this matter. Your opinion means a lot to me as does the opinion of others. It is sometimes difficult for me to know what the boundaries are because of my closeness to the situation. This all happened about 30 years ago. My mother practiced all sorts of quack remedies on me and my brothers. Especially on me. I know she had always been against medical doctors and especially the cabalistic psychiatrists practicing hyposis to make true Christians lose all moral sense, cluck like chickens, and who knows what other evil.
I think many JWs of that generation were and some still are phobic about medical science. They believe home remedies and quack science more than most people, I think. My mom worried about things like aluminum, vaccinations, lecithin, refined foods, and other seemingly ordinary things because of what she had read in the Society's publications. Any new quack craze that came around she jumped right on, and we kids were her guinea pigs. Liver diets, juice fasts, honey (the miracle food mentioned in the Bible), protein drinks, diets of brewers yeast, vinegar baths, enemas, cod liver oil, whiskey as a medicine, sour milk cultures, algea, chinese herbs (horrible horrible taste), Mexican allergy pills, nasal flushing... you name it, she probably had us doing it.
She did take us to medical doctors on occasion. My symptoms were so severe she took me to several. They could find nothing wrong and said it was psychosomatic and, of course, she then accused them of being quacks, playing God, and sending people to Devil worshipping psychologists rather than admit they couldn't find the real cause. Of course, we never went to the shrink, who probably would have realized that my problem was depression and somatic manifestations of it.
As the Awakes and Wts started to slowly change on their stance toward medical doctors, and even psychiatrists, my mother slowly began to accept and trust the medical profession, although much more slowly than the Society.
As for the enemas, when my mother gave an enema we had to take the whole bottle and then hold it for at least 10 minutes, but preferably 20. I don't know to this day why 20 was the magic number. While we held it, she rubbed our bellies to make sure the water throughly cleaned out every cavity. I still remember the feeling to this day. It was awful!
As for the person who cross-dressed all of the little boys, this was also a person in my family and a JW. She didn't do this for Halloween since our family did not celebrate Halloween. I think it was just something she would often do, then take pictures. I don't think my mother approved of this, but she didn't stop it either.
So it is still very confusing to me if this was okay for her to do or not. How far does a parent's right to administer remedies go? What is over the line? Why would a parent even do this kind of thing if it is over the line? I just don't know. It is something I have struggled to understand for a long time. Is it within reason to accept that a parent did this out of loving concern for a child? If so, why am I not worthy of that love now and am being shunned? Didn't I prove my obedience in submitting to those remedies? I have a hard time understanding it. I just don't understand.
Thank you for answering.
Tammy