Growing up in Jehovah Witness home

@divegeester said
No.

Are you denying being a JW?.....I remember some years back you claimed to be one, perhaps it was a nightmare. 🙂 😛

-VR

Here is another. VR .. its not mine 😀

It was hell. I hated it. Being a JW made me different from all of the other kids. As everyone knows, JWs don’t celebrate holidays or birthdays and my parents took this very seriously so when Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Valentine's day rolled around, I wasn’t allowed to make the typical holiday art work that all of the other kids were making. I wasn’t allowed to make a turkey from an outline of my hand. I wasn’t allowed to make cotton ball snowmen for Christmas, or give Valentines on Valentine's day.

What was worse of all was Halloween. The kids would knock on our door and my parents would have me answer and say, “I am sorry, but we don’t give out candy on Halloween because we are Jehovah’s Witnesses.”

The consequence of this is that the neighborhood kids would make fun of me. They would stand in the street and call me, “Jehovah’s Gas Bomb.” I know that it’s dumb, but I was only 6 or 7 at the time and it hurt. The kids stopped playing with me and I became an outcast. Sadly, that wasn’t the worst of it.

My mother was an alcoholic. I would come home from school and she would be passed out on the couch. The kids wouldn’t play with me so I would wake her up long enough to get permission to go hiking in the local hills. I collected butterflies, rocks, flowers and if I chanced upon the skeleton of a dead animal, I would bring it home and reassemble it. I thought that this was great fun, until I got home. By then, my mother would be awake and not remember me asking for permission to go on a hike and I would get beat with a wooden hanger for lying and leaving the house without permission. She would beat me until the hanger broke.

Now, I know that my mother’s alcoholism had nothing to do with being a JW except that the ladies in the congregation knew about my mother’s drinking and would come to the house and clean it up before my father came home to hide it from him. As a consequence, this treatment went on for years (until I was 16), and was completely hidden from my father because JWs were supposed to have these wonderful home lives. My father would come home to a clean house and dinner on the table, no thanks to my mom. He never knew what happened.

My mother once made me stand in front of her and she beat me in the face. She stopped when she broke her hand on my face. I was 16. By then, it had stopped hurting. So she started pulling guns on me - a 12 gauge shotgun - because she could no longer hit me hard enough for it to hurt.

So, the JWs did their best to hide this abuse from my father and the rest of the congregation. I had no friends growing up (literally). I spent all of my time alone. I am now more than 60 years old and it still hurts and I still have trouble making friends. I simply never learned how.

It’s amazing how it affected me. I remember one of my first girl friends; she reached out to touch my face and I flinched. I expected her to hit me — of course, she didn’t. It took a long time to trust someone well enough to allow them to touch my face.

For me, being a JW made me an outcast. I have no fond memories of any of it and consider them complicit in my abuse. They could have done something but didn’t. It wasn’t like they didn’t know. It was more important for them to give the appearance of piety than to deal with the real problem. As a consequence, I stopped being a JW a long time ago.

https://qr.ae/psYyGc

@rajk999 said
Here is another. VR .. its not mine 😀

It was hell. I hated it. Being a JW made me different from all of the other kids. As everyone knows, JWs don’t celebrate holidays or birthdays and my parents took this very seriously so when Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Valentine's day rolled around, I wasn’t allowed to make the typical holiday art work that all of the other kids ...[text shortened]... he real problem. As a consequence, I stopped being a JW a long time ago.

https://qr.ae/psYyGc

They don't sound like Very Good People to me.

I was under the impression JW'S didn't drink?

By the way just for the record I did think the other one was your story.

-VR

@very-rusty said
They don't sound like Very Good People to me.

I was under the impression JW'S didn't drink?

By the way just for the record I did think the other one was your story.

-VR

Well even in the strictest religious environment people are still frail and fallible people. They dont follow all the rules. Within any religious body there will be drinkards, child-molesters, wife-beaters, liars, deceivers and the whole range of human evils and sins.

@rajk999 said
Well even in the strictest religious environment people are still frail and fallible people. They dont follow all the rules. Within any religious body there will be drinkards, child-molesters, wife-beaters, liars, deceivers and the whole range of human evils and sins.

Excellent point of course that is hard to try to argue. 🙂

-VR

@Rajk999

I once knew an ex-JW. She told me that higher education was looked upon as "polishing the brass on a sinking ship." Not my sort of people. I think higher education, especially for woman, is what is most likely to keep humanity from going over a precipice in the next 250 years.

@moonbus said
@Rajk999

I once knew an ex-JW. She told me that higher education was looked upon as "polishing the brass on a sinking ship." Not my sort of people. I think higher education, especially for woman, is what is most likely to keep humanity from going over a precipice in the next 250 years.

Yes, I have heard similar stories coming from the JWs about education. Those JW elders are really very stupid people. You would think that after 120 years of mistakes, false prophecies, failed policies and widespread embarrasment, something would click in their brain. Clearly they are immune to common sense.

Education of women is critical for development and erasing poverty in most parts of the world. I dont understand why religious fanatics need to stop women from furthering their education. There is nothing biblical about that.

@rajk999 said
Why would someone take the trouble to write about their own life story and not tell the truth? I wont doubt that is possible but it was be rare. These are life stories which are written because the person is troubled and damaged emotionally.

I know of JW families who, although not physically abusinng children, they deprive them of birthdays, Mothers day, Christmas Day and ...[text shortened]... sts among their peers.

There is no biblical support for imposing such restrictions on children.

So you only believe personal stories that you already believe?

That's a shocker (not really).

@rajk999 said
Here is one story:

I need to preface my answer with this: everyone’s experience is not going to be the same. While I hold the religion in extremely low regard (not the members themselves) for it’s clear cult practices, the guilting, the child sex abuse scandals, the personal effect on my mental health, etc., you can at least expect a baseline of a typical crummy JW chi ...[text shortened]... hampered my social skills and had made me become severely judgemental.

https://qr.ae/psYtaw

That link doesn't match that story.

@very-rusty said
Are you denying being a JW?.....I remember some years back you claimed to be one, perhaps it was a nightmare.

I’m not a JW, I never have been, and I have never claimed to be one. You are mistaken.

@divegeester said
I’m not a JW, I never have been, and I have never claimed to be one. You are mistaken.

Your message NOTED: You don't have to keep repeating it. 🙂

Confused you with Robbie, not a big deal as I probably will lose no sleep over it.

-VR

@moonbus said
@Rajk999

I once knew an ex-JW. She told me that higher education was looked upon as "polishing the brass on a sinking ship." Not my sort of people. I think higher education, especially for woman, is what is most likely to keep humanity from going over a precipice in the next 250 years.

Is this a Prediction? Shame you will not be around to see if it comes to pass.

-VR

So...Of course I'm probably the only JW here I suppose. First I'm very suspicious of those links and stories. I hope no parents ever treat their children like not no matter the reasons the parents come up with. And no matter the religious beliefs or non religion they are a part of, I would hope that the right authorities or whoever would or could get involved in the worst situation, intervene for the children's sake.
So I will not say somewhere a situation like these supposed couple could not have happened. But this this poster seems to believe every JW family with children goes through this.
By no means are JW's perfect. My son isn't. I'm not and my father is not. We have all made mistakes with each other,
I'm 67 years old and have had probably close to a hundred or more very close friends that I grew up with that were JW's. I have been a part of I think 10 different congregations because of moving over the years.
The point is I'm not saying that maybe, possibly some kind of horrible situation like this hasn't happened somewhere in all my associates from all that I knew......but not in anyway by any means have I ever seen or heard such a thing happen anywhere with them.
But I will say this......... I know for a fact that if any of those elders in any of those congregations and this would apply to any Kingdom Hall all around the planet, no congregation would ever for one second ever put up with that especially if the was physical abuse. If it were something that the elders could not help with from the Bible, and it was physical abuse, the police could be called if that was the last resort to protect the children.
So the poster clearly makes it sound like that JW children go through situations like this and live in hell.
He seems to thrive on this every few months and other then a possible made up story, I can personally say,,,,, because I'm a JW and he isn't, that if this has ever happened I was never once told about it by anyone or even sensed it. With there being over 9 million JW's and the possible few bad situations like this, try comparing that to the hundreds of thousands of children and their sexual abuse done in other very dominant religions by their own priest?????
Why does he never mention those?

People sometimes try to include the whole Religion from what some are doing.

Like gooster for example a Christian? Not all Christians are as unkind as he is to people.

-VR