Posts by Bruja-del-Sol

Sorry to disappoint you, but I do know people who claim to hear voices of dolphins and whales (no, not ANT whales ) speaking to them, and guiding them, inside their heads! No kidding!

5

Fact: Your Life is trickling away or 936 Blobs...How many remain in your case?

by BluePill2 in

i have seriously been thinking about my life course (like any other human being) but especially in the light of past events and where i am standing now.

my posts here show that i have (like most of us) still a good way to go until i have shredded every part of my cultish past.

at one side it will always be part of who you are and why you are now thinking, behaving in a certain way on the other hand we have to let go.

Bruja-del-Sol

Love it, made one myself. Pretty confronting to see all those blobs spent in the Borg... but hey, there's more blobs than that to spend ouside the Borg

158

Circuit Accounts Servants Confesses how the SCAM WORKS!!

by JT in

jw
friends

yes, i too have wondered how an assembly that is held in a fully paid for assembly hall, with no food service, could possibly have $10,000 in expenses.

i suppose the bethel speakers have transportation expenses - maybe $1000 or so.

as for rent on the assembly hall, well you have already paid for it once, why pay again?

Jaw dropping thread... Glad that we usually didn't pay at the Assemblies, although we did pay a monthly contribution of 75 Dutch guilders to the congregation (for years!)... money that we could hardly miss. What a waste

I remember colleagues telling me that the whole JW'religion was money based, 'big fat CEO's behind huge desks are laughing their asses off in America about you suckers' they said... and they made me furious, it was NOT about money, nobody benefitted financially within the JW religion, it was all volunteers, donations for the printing of bibles and publications and this was the only religion showing genuine Christian love... yeah right! Those colleagues, over 25 years ago, were sooooo right!

20

How many Kingdom Halls have you went to in your lifetime?

by Iamallcool in

jw
friends

for me, i think i went to 20 kingdom halls in my lifetime.

just a guess.

.

Bruja-del-Sol

Been in 6 congregations and visited over 20 halls, inclusing the ones while visiting my grandparents, sleepovers at JW-friends while I was a teenager, and several newly build ones (my ex-husband was part of the 'quick build team' in the Netherlands) and a couple I've been to on vacation or for wedding talks.

I like the question, never really thought about this.

31

I Went To A Catholic Mass Yesterday And What A Waste of Time!

by minimus in

jw
friends

the priest acted as if he was the reason why people were there.

he was about 80 and totally disinterested in the affair although he married the deceased and her husband 15 years earlier.. his sermon's gist was that we need faith to accept that the reason why god has us die is so that we can go to heaven.

and that's it.. the only interesting (touching) time was when the grandkids gave testimonials about their beloved grandma.. oh, and one more thing.

Bruja-del-Sol

I love rituals (and humans have rituals all day long! Brushing your teeth in the morning, anything you do in a specific way or at a specific time can count for a ritual). Many of the rituals in a Catholic Mass are like the rituals being used in paganism, so I recognize a lot in it and kinda like it. Although my first Catholic Mass felt strange, indeed because of the kneeling, standing, sitting... I just stayed put on the bench

27

Do not talk about GAWD in Cracker Barrel on Sunday

by confusedandalone in

so this morning the wife and i went to cracker barrel for breakfast.

my lovely sister watched the kids for us last night so we have to pick them up later.. anyway a few minutes later the family sits at a table next to us.

their food comes and they begin to pray.they all join hands and he begins praying out loud.. very loud.. so out of respect my wife and i stop talking... they eat and we eat no biggie.

Bruja-del-Sol

Phizzy, love your line LOL. The look on that guy's face would've been priceless if CAA had said that...

52

What was your "Aha!" moment?

by Hortenzie in

for me it was when i learned that gb makes their decisions by 2/3 majority vote, not by direction of holy spirit..

Bruja-del-Sol

My 'aha'-moment was when the elders came to my ex-husband to tell him that he had to keep our children away from me, the evil DF'd woman, since I was 'a danger to their mental and spiritual health'. He kicked them out of his house and never went back to the hall again. My ex called me to tell me himself, and he said he would never let anybody come between me and our kids, even though he was mad at me at the time because I had left him. But he still respected me as the mother of the children. That was the basis for our friendship today, we respect each other and we'll always be part of each others family because of our history together and our children.

Later I learned about the UN NGO affair on a Dutch forum... after that I started reading CoC and then I knew for sure it was a cult. So glad that I got out and that my ex and kids are out as well!

61

Have you grown detached from caring about JW family and old friends?

by tootired2care in

jw
friends

after being out of the borg for a year and a half, weve dealt with a lot of nonsense from local elders stopping by unannounced, well-meaning do-gooders trying to encourage us.

somehow weve managed to get through this without getting dfd/dad.

for me the worst part of it all has been that much of my family has shunned me, and stopped talking to me, as soon as they heard through the grapevine that i wasnt going to meetings.

Bruja-del-Sol

@BluePill2: Yep, freedom is expensive these days Sad to read that you don't know where your parents live anymore. When I got married again five years ago I've sent my parents a wedding-card and the same calendar we gave everybody at the wedding (with our names and wedding date printed on it). On the back of the envelope I wrote my new address. Later I've heard that they shredded it all. So when we emigrated to Spain early this year I left without notice. They have no idea where I live right now.

I've also seen some episodes of 'Locked up abroad' and came to the same conclusion as you did: as an ex-JW one is treated worse than most criminals will ever be by their own family. How crazy is that

@Xanthippe: I've seen that same 'play' with my family. When my (non JW) grandmother died, my dad called me out of the blue and told me that if I wanted to attend the funeral I was welcome to come. So I did and brought my then fiance (now husband). What happened there really shocked me. I was prepared for being shunned by my parents and siblings, except for my non JW sister (she's lovely), but quite the contrary happened!

My brother kissed and hugged me, my other sisters cried and hugged me, my mother came to me and kissed and hugged me (something very weird, she was never very cuddly towards me) and even my dad was warm and loving. I was flabbergasted and of course, being the sissy I am, I started to cry and was afraid I would never be able to stop.
My mother even dared to ask 'why are you crying? It's all right now'... And she had me there... I believed her... (should've know better though).

Of course the rest of the people attending the funeral were all non JW's and a lot of them were relatives of my mother (it was her mother that had died). Afterwards we were invited to drink coffee with all of them at the funeral home, so we did. One of my sisters gave birth to her son a couple of months before, but she didn't send me a birth announcement card. After the funeral however she came up to me with my new nephew and asked me if I wanted to hold him for a while, which I did. It was the weirdest thing... Normally I would have been the first to visit when a new baby arrived in the family, now this baby was already a couple of months old and I had never seen him before. His sister, my niece, was around nine at that time and I overheard her saying "aunt Bruja is crazy"... which really hurt me, since I did nothing but love her ever since she was born, but apparantly that's what they had told her, that I was crazy. My sister, her mother, heard it as well and shushed her immediately! Yeah right... too late, I heard it!

After the coffee my mother asked me if we wanted to join them, since her cousin and his wife were coming over to my parents house... My jaw dropped... I hadn't been to my parents' for years and now my mother was inviting me! I couldn't resist, so we went there. It was really nice. I talked to my brother, my sisters, my parents asked us about our life, what we were doing, just normal stuff like nothing had ever happened! And again I bought it... I believed it all, it felt so genuine. I really thought this was the turning point, everything would be allright from that day on and we would become a normal family after all and live happily ever after.

W-R-O-N-G T-H-I-N-K-I-N-G!!!

The minute we said we were going to head back home, I saw the looks on their faces change. My brother and sister stepped back into their cult personalities and when I asked if we could email each other every now an then, just to keep each other updated about how things were, they both replied that this was not an option. "You know what to do if you want contact with us", "you've abandoned Jehovah", "you have to be reinstated before things can be good again" etc.. The blinds came down again, the shunning started that very second all over again.

After that I've never heard from them again*. I put a blog online shortly after the funeral to vent my disappointment, I realized my parents just needed me at their house to show the 'worldly' relatives of my mother that she had a happy family and all her children together. If I hadn't been there some questions might have been asked about their missing daughter... 'where is she? what happened?'... The family is not very positive about JW's. The embarressment to have to tell them the truth would've been too big for them, so they'd rather let me in their home to let me play my part in their charade. I felt disgusted when I realized I had been used and I wrote that whole story in my blog. My mother and youngest sister read it too, and they started a smear campaign on the internet, writing anywhere my husband or I wrote something that we were swindlers and telling lies about us. Up until today this has snowballed through the internet and other people (whom we've never met) started to add more lies to it. So when you look up my real name in Google, or my husband's, it looks like we're sort of a 'Bonny & Clyde'-couple... Really hurtful, since none of it is true, but there's nothing one can do to fight the so called 'free speech', anybody can write whatever they want about anybody. No proof needed, lies, hearsay, just write it down and post it online. The internet and Google will make sure it spreads like oil in the Gulf of Mexico...

* Oh yes, last year I received an email from my brother... asking me if I had any recordings of a song I used to play and sing, since he wanted to learn it too and couldn't find it on youtube... This year I found a lesson online with that specific song, so I sent him the link and wrote a few lines. I received an email in return that contact was not an option as long as I was DF'd and that he would wait patiently for me to return. Can you imagine that??? He needs something and contacts me, but when I contact him it's not an option to stay in touch. The hypocrite

So that's my story, that's why I closed my door for most of my family. And actually, writing this whole thing down makes me wonder why I even hope that my sister and brother will get out of the cult... I don't think I have anything to say to them anymore.

Sorry for the long story, had to get it off my chest now the topic's been brought up

@love2Bworldly: I have that same regret. No friends from my youth... well, that's not quite true... My husband was my classmate and we fell in love when we were in school, 16 and 18 years old. But my parents didn't approve since he wasn't a JW, so he was kicked out of my life by my father. Took me nearly 18 years to find him again and now he's my best friend EVER and the one that knows me the longest (and the best, sometimes better than I know myself )

11

How Do You Generally View People and Yourself?

by minimus in

jw
friends

i tend to look at people and situations with a little bit of humor.

i tend to feel that many view themselves as being better than they really are.

people's perceptions are often skewered.

Bruja-del-Sol

Never had many true friends. Got along with most of the JW's I've met over the years in several congregations, since I was a pleaser and always afraid of rejection. Since I've left the WTS there have been a few (worldly) people whom I came to care about deeply, but there are only three people in this world that I really trust from deep down inside of me and that I can rely on when it's really needed, and that's my children and my husband.

All the rest... I like a lot of people, even really love some, but I've been hurt by way too many to ever trust people again the way I used to. Too many people have used me for their own convenience, to 'get something' that I could provide but when I needed thém or their support... gone they were, dropped me like a hot brick. So how do I look at people? I like people, but don't let them come very close anymore.