I was born into a family who had been JWs since the early 1900s. My grandfather became a biblestudent before 1914. My father was born in 1914, so we were 'blessed' with two anointed ones in our family.

My father grew up being told he was living in the last days and it could happen any minute. He became an alcoholic in his early teens. When he met my mother, she had just received a rather large settlement. She also had her father'sfarm.....almost two hundred acres. Within five years of marrying my father, it was gone. My father spent the money on cars and whatever. He sold and traded off the land piece by piece. He figured
that since the world was going to end any day then why save? Why build up the farm? Why bother with a future. I absolutely believe that had my father been something other than a Jw, he would not have piddled the money and farm away. He died in 1974, a JW in good standing

My mother's family..father, mother, sister and brother....were killed when she was 14. The car they were riding in pulled in front of the mail train just outside her hometown. Her family were Assembly of God. She married my father when she was 15 and resisted becoming a Jw for 12 years. My father was an alcoholic by the time they were married and so her life with him was difficult, to say the least. Her third baby, a boy, died when he was eight days old. The Jw sister who she had book studies with convinced her that their salvation depended on her becoming a Jw. And, my father had moved the family
about six hours away from their hometown. She was away from anyone she knew, she had my brothers, an alcoholic husband who drank all his paycheck when he DID work.
She became a Jehovah’s Witnesses.

My mother finally divorced my father after twenty-three years. SHE was disfellowedshipped when she began dating my step-father. My father remained a JW in good-standing, even though he was basically the town drunk and it was a small town, so there was no way the other Jws did not know. She was eventually reinstated, but several years later she was disfellowedshipped again, this time for smoking. She was
reinstated again about six months before she died in March of 2001.

There were definite changes in her personality and how she looked at life after her baptism as a JW. She was more distrustful of others. She looked for the worse in people. She became a very hateful person as she got older. She had six children, five who lived, and fifteen grandchildren. Some of her grandchildren did not know her because she had done so many things to alienate everyone. She lived right in the
middle of everyone, but her children and grandchildren rarely visited. She never admitted to doing anything wrong. She would point fingers at other people who were doing exactly what she was doing, with a holier-than-thou attitude. She did some very cruel things to each of us. The only way to deal with her was to forgive her daily. And, we did.

The week before Christmas in 2000, she was rushed to the hospital with pneumonia which brought on another heart attack. She spent three days in ICU and then another
week on a ward. In January she was taken back to ICU with unstable blood pressure. In February she back in the hospital. It was during that visit that she overheard the doctor
telling me that there was nothing more that could be done for her. Her heart was too big and was just worn out. Later that night my mother started thrashing around in the bed,
breathing hard and was cold and sweaty. She kept shaking her finger at me as if she wanted to say something, but could not bring herself to. I kept telling her to tell me what
was wrong. That nothing she could say could be as bad as the thought of it was making her. Finally, after about fifteen minutes, she looked at me and said......'I did the best I
could.' I told her we all knew she had done the best she could for us...despite everything, I knew she had had a hellacious life. I sat with her and talked until she relaxed and was able to sleep. She died two weeks later.

This is the 'security' a JW has. My mother was terrified of dying and thinking that she had not done enough. She was terrified of what she was facing. She did not believe that
she could get comfort by believing in Jesus and asking Him for peace.

When I was little I felt special because we were Jws, the chosen ones. I was baptized when I was nine. I remember talking with one of the brothers about it, but I do not
remember much about that. I do remember the baptism.  
Two of my brothers and some other people were baptized at the same time. I can remember standing on a corner on main street with some adults handing out WTs. I actually liked that and I never minded going out in service. We went out into the country and sometimes took lunches. I would sit back and listen to the sisters gossip (gasp! yes, indeed they do) and then they would go on to the demon-possession stories. No one really wanted me in their car because I was very sick as a child and sometimes got car sick. I like to think it was divine intervention.

I suppose I was about ten or eleven when I really started paying attention to the talks. I started asking more questions during the book studies. I really started looking at the
graphic destruction pictures in the books and especially on the calendars. I absolutely believe that those pictures were directed at children, in order to start the control
early. The books were so graphic, while at the same time child-like, almost like the Dick and Jane books went had at school. I thought that earthquakes were just like that.......a
crack would open up and you fall into it and whoops...you are gone. I started asking more about the end of the world and did not get many answers...then I got frightened when I realized that most of the adults around me were scared. Not a good feeling when you are a kid. The fear kept building as I got older until it became severe panic attacks (panic is such an insignificant word for what a person goes through). Just the word 'Armageddon' would send me into a days long panic. Finally, when I was twelve after not getting any real answers....and the ones I did get were too vague… and also seeing the fear in the adults, I decided that I was not one of the ones who were going to make it. If I were then I would not have this fear. I still went to meetings and book studies and out in service. I even started a book study with a girl whose mother was having a book study. I believed it was the TRUTH. I had no doubt that it was the truth. But, the fear kept
getting stronger. I decided that when I was old enough I would stop going, live this life and was not going to be resurrected with my family. I eventually stopped attending meetings when I was eighteen, but I did not stop believing it was the Truth. I spent the next twelve years or so running from any mention of God, the bible and especially the END.

When I was thirty-one, I started working in a hospital. I met a woman there who was the most Christ-like person I have ever met.......before or since. I never heard her gossip. I never
heard her tell something someone had told her in private. She had the most peaceful, calm personality I had ever seen. I wanted to find out why. At first, I could not listen to
her when she started talking about Jesus to me. She did not scream at me, insist that I believe a certain way, or tell me I was lost if I didn't. She just gently talked, but more
important, she LIVED her faith. I think it was over a year later that I bought a bible and started reading it. I saw a Jesus that I had never met before all the time I was in the Truth. This woman did not save me, but with her gentle spirit she pointed the way.

I first got a computer in 1995. In 1996 I found the AOL chatroom ExJW Sanctuary. At first I was too afraid to go in. The when I did, I would only stay a minute or two and then would leave. Finally one night the owner of the room started asking me questions. She thought at first that I was a JW. When she found out that I had grown up a JW she was
very helpful to me...giving me websites and recommending books. I finally overcame my fear and then became extremely angry at the JWs and the effect they had had on me and
my family. I HATED the JWs. I became obsessed with causing their downfall.. I didn't just want to expose them, I wanted them GONE. I joined email discussion groups and message boards. I argued with JWs online. I challenged them to prove to me using only scripture that they were the truth. I put in another phone line so I could have a dedicated line to the computer and kept it on 24/7. I met so many exJWs on the net. At last, I realized I was not the only one who had walked away from them. I read stories after stories by people who had been JWs. I talked to people on the phone. At one time, I think it was about 98 or 99, there was a big discussion about if we could bring a class action suit against the WT society. I was ready to sign on. In 2000 I found voice chats. I opened rooms with names like...Who's That Knocking on Your Door....and...What Jws Will Not Tell You....True Witnesses of Jehovah (that one really got them going)...I debated them...argued with them....talked about the UN and Rand cam.....the pedophiles....I was determined that I would do whatever I possible could to bring them down. If the JWs would not listen to the real truth then I wanted the society gone so they would HAVE to
not be JWs.

Then, in about 2003 I burned out. I started thinking about my old co-worker and how she lived her witness. I still confronted JWs but I stopped opening rooms about it. I had finally gotten the WT society out of ME. I realized one day that I no longer hated them. God had taken that away from me. I still will challenge them, but I do it now to point out their false teachings and only that. I still know the JWs are mislead by the WT society, but the freedom I have now is awesome. I no longer am controlled in any way by the WT
society.

 Thank God.