Posts by anti-absolutism

13

Sharring my secrets..continues..and the end

by kls in

jw
friends

let me say first i am not telling this for sympothy in any way, my growing up is a lot better then a lot of kids,the horror some of these defenseless babys and children have, the death penalty is to good.the reason i call these threads ..my secrets, is something you dont talk about outside those walls as i am sure other's on this sight can relate to.i am telling my story so many of you can understand why i am trying so hard and long to get my husband out of this sick cult.he is all i have known since i was fifteen.some of you have asked if my parents were jws?

no catholics,some asked why the neighbors did nothing ,no one wanted to get their nose dirty i guess and two neighbors were cops.before i start more of my life ,please when i wright a thread about what ever ...please dont tell me i need to talk to someone or i am feeling this way because of my child hood.if any thing it has made me a strong person in many ways.i as many in simular situations are good at blocking things out and becoming callus to situations.i promised not do drag this on and here i go .all right i will shut up and get on with it.growing up i learned there are, mean drunks, nice drunks, quiet drunks,etc.lucky me mom was a mean drunk.when she did get out of her bed , for her alcohlic delivery,my sister and i would run upstairs to our room and push our beds against the door .i can't say some of the things she had done to me ,it is to hard.notice i said things done to me , i always felt my mother hated me , she always treated me cruel,punishing me for no reason or just letting me know i was worthless.finally during one of her trips out of her room to get the wonder juice delivery, she stopped to tell me how i ruined her life by becoming pregnant with me,i guess the story goes my mother was going to leave my father and one night he raped her and became pregnant with me .oh ya it was my idea to just jump in her womb.any way thats just some .more tid bits of home.living with my syco sister didnt last to long ,my other sister now almost eighteen was married and had a baby, me i was fifteen and pregnant waiting for my sixteenth b-day( pagan) to get married.well got married things were rough but alright till a cult member started to talk to my husband at work, well he told me we got sucked in , after a year or two i felt something was wrong with this so i left it but my husband was trapped.to me i have a much stronger mentality were as my husband who says he had a good childhood is very weak and gullible.next had four great kids (my life) and a husband whose life is work, the hall, and himself.now i am fortyfive all kids grown and gone but one ,he's ninteen.i am always in contact with my next oldest sister,but not with my oldest.

my brother i see a few times a year , and mother, she was constantly put in nut houses and would get out and go soeone would put her back in .

anti-absolutism

kls...... This may not be what you want to hear, but sometimes the truth is hard to accept.

You seem to be strong-minded about not wanting people to tell you to seek help from someone other than you. Since you feel so strongly about this, I will not suggest that you do it. It would do NO GOOD. From your comments, though, it seems that you have one hell of a lot of pent up frustration that I don't think will go away just from venting.

Blueblades made a good point..... that not all JW's are sick-minded. Don't hate them. Understand that they are misguided, yes, but hatred is too damaging to YOU. Believe it or not, the GB you speak of are, for the most part, just a bunch of f*cked up, misguided people that don't mean you or me or anybody any harm intentionally. Do I think that they hurt people?..... YES Do I think they mean to?... NO

The harm that is inflicted upon you is from YOU ONLY!!!!!!!!!!

I had a friend, recently that said to me that he didn't think that his mother deserved his forgiveness, yet, for all the crap that she did to him. I honestly had never expressed this feeling to him before, but I will express to you what I expressed to him........ Showing forgiveness to someone has NOTHING to do with the other person and has EVERYTHING to do with YOU growing as a human.

Conversely, holding on to pent up frustration doesn't hurt anybody but ourselves!!!!!!! Trust me, I have to remind myself of this EVERYDAY just to be able to continue growing....

I hope you understand, like I said in my previous post to you, that what happened to you was terrible and undeserved, but ONLY YOU can control how you feel about it in the future..... Take care.. Brad

16

sharring my secrets

by kls in

jw
friends

you all are so special, i just finished reading the thread i posted the other day and again you all made me cry(probably girl thing) not in a bad way but in a happy way,sometimes i think i found you guys just in time.so because of your caring i would like to share my life story,no i won,t drag it on.i was raised in a home with two sisters and a brother,i was the youngest ,i am three years younger then one sister ,ten years between my other sister and twelve years younger then my brother.father was a beater,belts,boards but his favorite was his fists,i went to school with plenty of black eyes and lying were they came from.my older sister and brother were married and out of the house and very seldom visited.as kids my brother and sister were beat also so there was alot of tenson when they did visit.so with my one sister and me we take the beatings for them and hide in our rooms hoping we didn,t do any thing to irritate our parents.my mother , i swear she would blow things out of perportion just to see us get beat , i think because she was beat so offen by my dad , i would hear them in my room at night or in the day , the shit would start to fly and we just hid.my parents were both drinkers but usually it was moderate until i was about ten years old and my sister was twelve, the drinking became out of control especially for my mom,fights got more intense till it was like living in a war zone.it got to the point that my mother never left her bedroom and was drunk twentyfour hrs.

a day, not even coming out to eat.my dad ,sister and me would do the shopping and cleaning and cooking.life was ,well for my sister and me was becoming normal .then one day coming home from school ,i see the police, my older sister and brother are there..odd, they are all crying and inform me dad killed himself and they just took his body.

well , we have funeral moms drunk at , and all of a sudden everyone is gone to their own lives while my sister and me are stealing food to live.

anti-absolutism

kls, that is some really tough stuff you have gone through, but you made it out and I TRULY believe that "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger". It sounds like you are very much alive, meaning you haven't been "killed" emotionally. You now have the tremendous reward of being able to help others who go through similar things.

Although what you went through is VERY unfortunate, terrible and undeserved, may you find the strength to now soar emotionally in a good way. You have experienced EXTREME emotional trauma, and you can turn it all into EXTREME emotional bliss. Keep sharing..

HUGS AND KISSES......Brad

43

Describe Yourself.

by SpannerintheWorks in

jw
friends

not everyone feels comfortable revealing details of themselves on this forum, and i've never met anyone on this discussion board (but of course i hope i will one day!

) and i just thought that it would be fun and interesting for all of us to post a little about ourselves!.

i'm 40, own 3 businesses, married to a jw wife (wish i wasn't) and am addicted to a certain website..., .

anti-absolutism

I'm a 33 year old guy, going through a separation/divorce right now. So shortly I will feel free enough to look elsewhere for some 'lubbing'.....

I have 4 BEAUTIFUL kids, aged 8,5,4,2. I own a courier service and AFTER my divorce is final I have other business plans to follow through with......

I'm obsessive compulsive and a perfectionist but since being out of the borg that's getting better.. But seriously, just a regular guy who is trying to learn to love life more and more everyday, now that I know it is up to me and not some old farts in Brooklyn to run my life.

Oh, and I live in London, Ontario, Canada. And thanks for asking. Brad

37

The Watchtower Society Is NOT A Cult!

by SpannerintheWorks in

ok, don't get too excited, that is not what i think.

but it is what my wife (brought up as a jw) informed me this morning, after i said that i think the wbts is a cult.

the thing is, she has kind of "challenged" me to prove it!

anti-absolutism

On the back of Raymond Franz' book "Crisis of Conscience" there is a quote by an evidently brilliant person. In describing the book Kim Kimmons says: "It jolts the conscience......a warning of what can happen when an individual turns his God-given right of decision-making over to an organization."

IMO, this simple, yet profound quote says it all. Hopefully you can convince your wife and friend that God made it so that we all make DECISIONS every day and therefore the fact that we basically have no chance to make DECISIONS inside that organization indicates that it is a mind-control organization/cult.

Easier said than done of course but good luck.

By the way, don't say that it was on Ray Franz' book that you got that quote!!!!!!!

Brad

7

I'm going through a separation/divorce...

by anti-absolutism in

jw
friends

i got served with papers last wednesday from my wife for a separation.

it includes her wanting me to leave the house and is full of a lot of hooey.

it should be interesting, but for the sake of discussion here, i was wondering if anyone has advice/experience in this area: what can i control as far as how much the kids are exposed to the witnesses?.

anti-absolutism

Thanks for the comments. One thing that I wanted to point out is that MY WIFE doesn't take the kids to the meetings... only the kids grandmother, her mother. Would that make it any different? Can I stop her mother, their grandmother from taking them?

The fact is that her mother told my wife years ago, (and stuck to it) that she would do nothing to help her daughter if I also benefitted. Besides each of us not getting along perfectly, it seems that that form of abuse from her mother eventually broke her down.

I had a friend who went through a divorce and he said that there is actually a term (which I can't remember right now) that is acknowledged by the courts, regarding when a wife never leaves the CONTROL of her mother and it damages the relationship.

Do you think that if I can convince the courts of this (and I have lots of evidence that I think will) that they may grant my wishes to not allow her mother to take them? If I can't, I will certainly continue to do as some of you here have suggested and expose them to the other, more open-minded world outside of JWism.

My eight year old son is already getting out of sports, thanks in great part I believe, to the JW 'anti-sports' influence of his grandmother.

Another thing is that my wife allows my eight year old to stay over at her mothers about 5-6 nights a week right now and has for about three months. I have, of course, voiced my discontent. My wife has given my feelings on that matter no concern and has even made huge scenes in front of my 8-year old about it. To save him any extra hardship I have let it slide for now.

I REALLY feel a very strong need to get him out of that situation. What the hell do I do?

Brad

7

I'm going through a separation/divorce...

by anti-absolutism in

jw
friends

i got served with papers last wednesday from my wife for a separation.

it includes her wanting me to leave the house and is full of a lot of hooey.

it should be interesting, but for the sake of discussion here, i was wondering if anyone has advice/experience in this area: what can i control as far as how much the kids are exposed to the witnesses?.

anti-absolutism

I got served with papers last Wednesday from my wife for a separation. It includes her wanting me to leave the house and is full of a lot of hooey. It should be interesting, but for the sake of discussion here, I was wondering if anyone has advice/experience in this area: What can I control as far as how much the kids are exposed to the witnesses?

My wife and I were married in 1993, after being df'd in 1992 at the same time...(wink wink nudge nudge ) I never went back but eventually she did and she got reinstated about a year later. Now almost 10 years later she hates anything to do with religion and although she has tatoos and piercings, she was not df'd again.... she just drifted away.

We have 4 children, the oldest being 8. A couple of months ago, (based on my memories when I was about the same age) I tried to speak to my wife about my oldest child going to meetings with her mom. In particular, I remember my oldest sister always saying we had to get our dad to start going back to meetings, since Armageddon could come at ANYTIME, and he would CERTAINLY die!!!

So I asked my wife if it bothered her that Brandon is being or will be taught that 'mommy and daddy are going to die at Armageddon'? Even though she apparently HATES the JW religion she doesn't seem to understand the harm inflicted by them.

Does anybody have any experience with how it will go when I go to court? Will I have a good chance of limiting or eliminating his going to meetings?

Any help would be appreciated. Brad

30

Cain and Abel..... why the disagreements?

by anti-absolutism in

jw
friends

when i was quite young, (about 8 years old) and i was told about the abel being favoured by god, cain getting jealous and killing abel story, i couldn't help but wonder why god was so hard on cain.

i am certainly not condoning cain killing his brother, but since god made both the animals that abel was offering and the veggies that cain was offering, why was cain looked down on?.

also, why did it seem better to god to kill an animal that abel offered, as opposed to thinking, well at least cain is only wasting some food.

anti-absolutism

RAYZORBLADE,

I appreciate your witty sarcasm. I feel the same way. I read a quote by Montaigne recently, maybe even on this site, that was very interesting:

"Man must certainly be stark mad. He cannot make a flea and yet he makes Gods by the dozen."

Very true!!!!! Brad

34

A Little Game

by JH in

jw
friends

mind game

this is strange...can you figure it out?

are you the 2% or 98% of the population?

anti-absolutism

Sara Annie,

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but your math was a little off. It had to come out to four, no matter what.

By the way, thanks to JH's help I now know that an iguana is eating an avacato in Djibouti.

Brad

30

Resurection of "Can any believer answer this?"

by Chap in

hi all.. there was an interesting thread a while back that i have a few things to add to.

i am new so i didn't know if anyone would see a post i would put there since the thread happened a few months ago.

it is going to take a while to put all my thoughts on the subject.

anti-absolutism

After having read the previous thread and now this one, I am certain that Chap is pomegranate but has taken A LOT of valium since October 2002..... lol

To quote Montaigne in 1588, who said, "Man must certainly be stark mad. He cannot make a flea but makes gods by the dozen."

In an effort to prove that I HAVE NOT gone mad, I refuse to make my own god. But it is very entertaining to read about other people making their own!!!!!!!!!!

Brad.... of the "I hope the god you DO make is a lot nicer than the JW one" class

2

BRAIN-WASHING - excellent article found on the web

by Prisca in

the article is rather long, and i was going to just post the link but i can't get a direct link, since it's from a message board.

in this situation, the questioner is not merely given authority by prestige; he may also have the power to keep the tortured person in prison, to torture him, and perhaps end his life.

[1] does the watchtower society have the power to 'keep the tortured person in prison'?.

anti-absolutism

I thought the one quote, "the effect, whether intended or not...." was important. Some outsiders find it hard to believe that mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers would SHUN their other family member/s so therefore it must be that the shunned DESERVED it. The reality is that the people shunning DO NOT REALLY UNDERSTAND the harm they are causing. It is truly not "intended" to cause all the hurt that it does.

As the saying goes, though........"the road to hell is paved with good intentions".... not a literal fiery hell after death, in my opinion, but a life-long subconscious hell. To be free from the mental anguish of being a JW is heaven on earth.

May everyone be free from it someday.!!!!!!!!

Brad