Episodes

Episode 1 – Jenny.mp3

[00:00:01] Welcome to my new podcast called shunned. I’m guessing that most listeners right now are coming from listening to my personal story that I shared on my nine part series called This J.W. life where I explain my life as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses and my path out of the cult. I got a lot of requests to continue exposing these things through the stories of others and I’ve heard you my response is to create this new Shunned podcast as a way to get the stories of others out there today. September the 2nd is the second anniversary of a day on which myself and my wife were formally announce from the platform and our local king Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses as no longer being Jehovah’s Witnesses. Today is our second official QRA anniversary and what better day than this to start this new podcast. In fact this first episode is my wife’s personal story. You’ve heard mine and now you get to learn more about her and her life including her shunning. My goal here is to let these stories stand for themselves. Although I do conduct these interviews the plan is to strip my ordeal out and to let my interviewees story stand on its own merits. This isn’t about me. This is about the person that is choosing to be vulnerable and to tell their story. To help you there is a learning curve to this type of production and I’m no longer recording alone so I’ve invested in the equipment to record others and I’m learning how to put this together.

[00:01:31] So take this journey with me and let’s all keep growing we need to keep exposing these things to the light. I want to help the extra HOA’s was this community but I also want to help others that have faith shunning to spread their stories. One of the things I’ve learned since leaving is that Jehovah’s Witnesses aren’t as special as I thought. There are many belief systems and ideologies that tolerate no rival and that absolutely cut people off that want to leave. There are also many people out there that are captive to a concept and that want to leave but know that it will cost them a life as one of the shunned. I want all of you to know that you’re not alone. I want you to find comfort and inspiration in the stories of others. I want you to find community as one of the shunned. So let’s get started. There are people that walk among us every day that have a secret religious ideology has rendered them mute. Among the family and friends that they once knew these are the stories that those religions don’t want you to hear. These are the stories of the shunned my name is Jenny. I’m 37 years old. I was a Jehovah’s Witness and I am shunned my parents were baptized as Jehovah’s Witnesses when I was one. It’s a common thing for any parents to feel like they need to pick a religion to raise their child. And my mom was especially frustrated with the church that she was raised in. So she was looking for something new. Well my mom was because she was searching.

[00:03:25] She tried my dad’s religion the one he was raised in and it didn’t tell her anything different and that’s what she was looking for something different. She was told that her dad was going to hell after her dad died because he was a drunk and she hated that she thought that was horrible and she wanted some she wanted that religion that didn’t teach something so cruel because she felt like God was more loving then sending a man with a drinking problem to hell. And so she looked for something different. And my dad’s religion didn’t tell her anything different than where she was raised in. So when Jehovah’s Witnesses knocked on her door and told her they wanted to tell her. Good news from the Bible. She was definitely excited about that and they were able to answer a lot of the questions that she had in a way that made her feel a lot better about the Bible. And so they were they had been studying the books the Jehovah’s Witnesses study with you so that you can get about teased and by time I was one. They were both baptized and well on their way and raising me to go along that same path that they had gone on themselves teaching me that this was the only one true religion. I needed nothing outside of it. And I did go to school. But that was really and I saw my grandparents but that was really the only thing outside of the religion that we had very much to do with at all. Their religion made me feel special and that was a big deal to me. I didn’t feel special at home. Neither of my parents paid a lot of attention to me.

[00:05:26] They were more or less and I felt I felt used often around my parents and at school I wasn’t special I was a nobody I just quietly said in the corner. Most of the time and when I was when I was at the Kingdom Hall of Joe was witnesses. I did feel special because I was told that I was doing a very important work. And when I would go in the door to door ministry people would say say oh what a what a sweet little girl and you’re you’re out you know doing doing this work. And they take our take the magazines from me. I mean you’re not going to say no to a little girl who hands you the hand you the magazines. And I would answer questions during the appropriate times at meetings and I would receive a lot of accolades for that. I was actually even up on the stage giving demonstrations and talks at a very young age and I just loved the attention. I loved the fact that people told me I was doing something important and made me feel special. It was a pretty big deal to me to actually get some positive attention. What I looked at the world around me. I was told that it was filled with people who were trying to hurt me. I was told that these were that there were horrible things happening just outside of of my own my own little community and that the world was going to be coming to an end soon because it couldn’t possibly stand much longer. I was told that I shouldn’t be friends with with anyone. Kids at school definitely off limits.

[00:07:35] I wasn’t too to be very close with them I would I would be nice to them but we were not friends. And I was constantly shown pictures from our literature of the world coming to an end very soon. And those are some pretty graphic images we would see fire raining down from the sky and children drowning and and mothers screaming and people running in terror in the streets. And that was a thing we saw quite a bit. And it was it was something we were supposed to be very aware of its being very real and we were supposed to look forward to this happening because it was God’s idea. And God was going to make it happen to vindicate his name. At home I really didn’t have I had no personal space no belongings. I was one of seven people and a very small house. I was the oldest of five girls. We lived in a 800 square foot house two bedrooms one bathroom. There was very little space. You certainly didn’t have. There wasn’t a room you could go to to just be by yourself. There were people running in and out and children all the time and I didn’t have my own note my own sayings really. I we all had hit household community toys that were blocks and Barbies and things like that that we could play with but I had two belongings that I can think of. I had a blanket that I grew up sleeping with every night. It was blankey and I had a Barbie doll. It was an Ice Capades Barbie and she was absolutely gorgeous and she was mine.

[00:09:36] Those were the two belongings that I can remember actually having as a kid. But other than that it was it was everyone had everything. And I really lost. I kind of yearned for a sense of belonging and it made me feel like I wasn’t I wasn’t my own person. I also relationships and my house were a real struggle. My mom was a person who had very little confidence and would constantly tell me about things that she had done that she was hoping that I would be proud of her for and looking to me to fluff up her ego. She didn’t listen to me a lot. She didn’t pay so much attention to me. She took very good care of me but she didn’t. She didn’t make me feel loved or paid attention to. My dad was much much harder on me. He saw me as small and he didn’t respect me. And so when he would be in a frustrated mood he would take it out on me and he hit me. I got spankings for there was a saying in my house it was for no good reason I would get a spanking for no good reason and he apologized for that. After doing so because my mom would take him to task for it and tell him that he can’t just beat up on a little girl because he was in a bad mood. And he he would actually apologize for it later and then but because he had gotten his angst out of the way by hitting me he would want to play with me like he was trying to make it up.

[00:11:44] And that was I was really hard on me. What I learned from that was that if I was bothering somebody it was a really bad thing and I was about to get hurt for it and so I tried so hard not to be a bother. It’s something I learned from my mom too because she was afraid of my dad. I never saw my dad mistreat her in any way. It was really just his kids but he he just seemed to want to talk to her about serious things but she couldn’t handle any of it. And the way she dealt with him was to shut down and cry and shut him out and tell him he was being mean. So their relationship was pretty pretty rough. There wasn’t. There was very little escape in my house. Like I said there was no real space. We didn’t have a TV. So there was no distraction either. We did go to the library a lot. I loved the library and I read a large portion of the books in that library. That was all I had really was to do to do was to read. And I escaped to fictional worlds with regularity. We had a big garden out back and I would pick vegetables out of the garden and we would play out there during the summer. There would be it would be time for canning and freezing and we made our own salsa and we made our own jams and jellies and we would Canet and eat it throughout the winter not far from my house. Within a short walking distance there was what we called the Big Hill.

[00:13:47] There was some kind of factory and they just had a big space of grassy area and it was on us. It was a bit of a slope. It made it seemed huge when I was a little girl. But it was it was a place where I could actually go to and it was the one place where I sometimes found solitude if I got to go there without my little sisters coming and I have some good memories on that big hill run and up and down in the sunshine and imagining things. I did a lot of imagining when I was a little girl. At school right away being one of Jehovah’s Witnesses makes you different at school. If you think about kindergarden I mean kindergarden you just color pictures and do fun activities and kindergarteners still believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny so holidays are a big deal in kindergarten. And Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t celebrate holidays. They think that the holidays are offensive to Jehovah God and so right away I was thrown in to a place where I had to constantly stand aside stand up and say and set aside as different. I was not allowed to say the Pledge of Allegiance. That was also something that Jehovah’s Witnesses feel like offends God. When a kid had a birthday and they their mom brought in cupcakes or cookies everybody would go to the lunchroom and everybody would get a cupcake except for me and I would sit away a little bit from the festivities and let them have their fun and just wait till it was over. I felt bored and and like I was missing out.

[00:15:48] But I also felt a little bit guilty cause I wanted a cupcake. But I knew that cupcake. I was told that cupcake was going to offend God they were the kids would come back to school and talk about the gifts that they received for Christmas and they were so excited and they would show each other what they got. And I never had any thing for Christmas I didn’t celebrate Christmas. Sometimes my mom would make sure that she took me out of school that I missed the day where there was a Christmas party or a Easter party but sometimes around Christmas especially there would be a day where the school wasn’t taking it quite so seriously and they play like a movie and they play maybe a holiday movie. I would feel guilty because I wanted to watch that movie. I never got to watch TV. So to see a movie was pretty exciting for me. And I was just entranced by it. But I also felt bad because I knew it was offensive to God and I didn’t want to offend guide and I was also disappointed because I never got to see the end of any of these movies. I’ve seen the beginning of a couple of them but I never got to know how it ended most of the teachers at my school were actually really great. They were very accommodating. My art teacher especially if the kids were putting together a Mother’s Day gift yet another holiday that is off limits for Jehovah’s Witnesses. She would actually come up with a specific thing for me to do that was different than everyone else. And I mean that is pretty cool of her.

[00:17:34] She had a lot of students and for her to have taken the time out and do that for me. It was really nice of her. My music teacher was actually he’s actually quite a jerk. He seemed to enjoy the power trip he got when he would make me sing a holiday song. Otherwise I was going to fail this grade or he he was he was pretty hard to get along with. He made me feel afraid and and then I felt awful because I had sang a holiday song and that was going to offend God. And I was really put in a bad situation there. But for the most part most of the teachers like I said were really nice to me. There was one time when I was little that I had gotten a photo album and I was pretty excited about that photo album because all the kids at school had all those little teeny tiny school pictures that they were passing around. And I got a photo album because I had gotten several of those pictures and I was excited to put them in. And I went through it labeled some of the pages I wish I had some I had a page where I was going to put pictures of family and then I had a page where I was going to put pictures of all those little kids from school. And so I wrote friends at the top and then I realized what I had just done because I had just called the kids at school friends and they were not supposed to be my friends. I was really upset I had ruined my photo album and I had just messed up.

[00:19:25] And so my mom helped me to make a new page and we just wrote classmates on it so that it was appropriate. And this is for people who I went to school with. And it was all right for me to have the pictures of BET BUT but of course they weren’t my actual friends when I was in the fifth grade. I was actually asked to be a part of a special program at school. It was called The Reach program. It was essentially something that was for kids who were making really great grades and found school super easy which was me. And it was kind of an accelerated learning program that would go on through fifth grade. And they told me about this program and how special it was that I qualified for it because I had to and I had worked hard. And I was smart and I needed some extra extra help do and some some extra things. I was so excited about that program. And I loved that they they thought that of me. Nobody had thought things like that before. Of Me at school. And so I went home and I told my mom how excited I was that this this honor had been bestowed on me and my mom never thought much of school. She definitely. My mom taught me that if something was hard I should quit because hard things were too much work.

[00:21:08] And when I told her about the reach program she assured me that I did not need to do something like that that they were just gonna sign me a bunch of homework and it was an after school activity and Jehovah’s Witnesses couldn’t do after school activities because it took time away from the meetings and from them bible studies at home and from going in the door to door ministry. So I wasn’t allowed to do the reach program. And I was I was pretty disappointed although at that point I had kind of picked up on her idea that hard work was a bad thing. I learned it pretty well and so I was I was relieved that I wasn’t going to have to do all that extra homework. There was a lot more to the meetings than just feeling special. I definitely never paid attention at the meetings I spent that time daydreaming. And it was kind of a nice meditative time for me. But the meetings were definitely boring for me because I didn’t pay attention to them. I didn’t have any friends in my kingdom hall and my congregation because there were no other kids in my kingdom hall. It was just me and then my little sisters who were quite a bit younger than me at the time and and so I learned to talk to the old people. A lot of the old people were really nice to me and they treated me they were just so happy that I came and talked to them and they were happy to see me and it was nice to have somebody happy to see me. The front row is where my family always said at meetings and the front row was not a good place for my family. We were a very distracting crowd. There was always babies. My mom had five kids so there was a lot happening.

[00:23:20] My dad never had a good sense of how to behave in a social environment. He would actually heard a few things he did. He would take his comb out in the middle of the meeting on the front row and he would. He had sound effects that went with all this. He put his comb out and he would brush his hair and then he’d flip it in the air and catch it with a little whistle and then stick it back in his pocket. That was a foul that really embarrassing even as a little kid he would belch and he would fart and then he would say excuse me audibly before the meeting was finished. About 10 minutes before it was over he would turn to the girls and he never had a good whisper. So he would say to them aloud you need to get this place cleaned up. And it was always a mess. There were books everywhere and papers and so they’d get out of their chairs and start collecting things and putting them in bags and people are trying to pay attention. But it had to have been hard with all of that happening in the front row. There was one particular time that I remember MEYER My dad causing quite a stir in the Kingdom Hall my baby sister. I was 15 and my baby sister at the time was under one. She had learned to sit up by herself. But she was certainly not walking yet. I think she was just learning to crawl and my dad decided at one meeting in particular it was time she learned to sit still and be quiet.

[00:25:14] None of these gurgling baby noises that she had been making she would coo and he decided that was distracting. So he put her on his lap and every time she made a peep she slapped her leg. He could hear it through the whole building and she’d cry. He didn’t comfort her. He didn’t hush her. He let her cry and then she finally would stop and she’d start playing again with whatever she was playing with eating her fist or whatever and she would make another noise and he’d slap her leg and she would cry. And this went on the entire meeting. I mean she weren’t she stopped making any noises at the con at it during the meetings but it was really rough to watch. And you could just feel the tension and the building all the people watching him and thinking how inappropriate this was. It’s a little girl they didn’t mind her making a little cooing noises she wasn’t really causing a problem. It was honestly just another one of my dad’s power trips. When we saw those a lot especially at the assemblies and conventions assemblies and conventions were big meetings special meetings that we would travel to. They were usually about an hour away from our home congregation but there would be several congregations that would get together and we would. It was an all day thing. Usually an all weekend thing.

[00:26:56] And so for us to get everybody ready early in the morning and drive an hour to get there it was a stressful thing for my parents because they had a lot of kids that stress always made my dad get really mad and we knew he was going to take it out on one of us. It was usually me and he somebody was always getting a spanking on the way to or on the way home from assemblies because he was so stressed and while we were at the assemblies it wasn’t actually too bad because my parents and my sisters usually slept through them. The entire row of my family would be sitting there asleep. I was the only one awake. I would take notes and I would look up all the scriptures in my Bible and I would listen or daydream and I was the only one that was ever paying any attention or it looked like I was paying any attention. I think one of my favourite things about the meetings when I was younger was when I wrote talks we would have like a demonstration pretend like we were going in the door to door ministry and we would use those times is like a practice session. So I was a little girl and I was writing one of these practice session talks but I would have as the person I was talking to and it would be an up to Holt. So I really struggle as a kid to try. My mom would always help me of course but I mean I’m I’m in second grade and I’m talking to a woman in her 30s and telling her how she should be able to fix her life based on this set of scriptures and it was definitely awkward. It didn’t.

[00:28:59] A lot of times I would just write something that didn’t would never have happened in real life because that was just how I had to write it in order to make the material and the theme fit but I really like doing it and I got a lot of accolades were it so that was kind of nice. The summer before I turned ah the summer before I went into sixth grade I had one of the most important sisters in our congregation come up to me and say to me that she had a special job for me there was going to be a new family in our congregation and they had a little girl who was about my age when I was pretty excited and may never been another kid in my congregation that was my sister. And so when the girl came to the hall with her family the Kingdom Hall I went up and I met her and there was that awkward silence. People looking at their shoes as you know the adults asking us each questions. We were we didn’t know really how to talk to each other. We were shy. But then after that meeting she came and told me that I had been invited to go to that important sisters house to a cookout and her family was going to pick me up and take me to the sisters house out in the country and we were gonna have a cookout. Well I had never been invited to a cookout before my family did not get invited to things and I was pretty excited. I was going to be riding in the car with another family and I was going to get to go see someone else’s house. I was really excited and so when we went my new best friend and I we were inseparable.

[00:31:04] We didn’t stop talking the entire time. We both cried when we got when it was time to drop me off back home because we had had so much fun it was it was just the best and I was so excited because I’d read books about people who had friends and I never knew what it was like. But finally I could say I had a friend and then we end up we went to this when we got into sixth grade we had almost all of our classes together it was so cool we were really excited and we would walk to classes together and we talked the last class of the day was the only class that we had different teachers for. We went to different places and so she would always walk me to my locker and then she’d walk on to her locker which was just down like one more section as time went by. I kind of realised that the guy who had his locker next to me Todd he was took up all the room I couldn’t get to my locker cause he was like taken up all the space. So if I hurried to my older I could actually get there before Todd and so I told her my friend. I said I’m not going to walk with you today I’m just going to hurry and get to my locker so I can get there and get my books out before he gets in the way. So I hurry down the hallway and next thing I know there’s a sharp pain in the back of my head and I’m on the ground.

[00:32:38] I look up and there is my friend she had grabbed my ponytail and thrown me on the ground and she said how dare you not walk with me. People are going to think we’re fighting and I just sat outside. I was horrified. I didn’t I didn’t know that she would be so mad and well because I had grown up learning to tiptoe around people’s feelings I apologized and I told her that I was sorry I tried to explain it but I must not have done a good enough job and and I I would always walk with her now I promise and I did but that was just kind of a taste of the kind of friendship that we had. She was not very nice to me and I was just so glad that I had a friend that I put up with whatever she threw me out of her room and down the stairs before she threw trucks at me. She she Oh we always did what she wanted. And then by time seventh grade came around came and went eighth grade she started really distancing herself from me. She told us she would tell me that I was too immature for her. And I kept trying to be friends but it didn’t work. I couldn’t make it work. And she had been pushing me away for a while before I even was actually able to accept it. Finally one day when I called her she told me that she was reading a magazine and was too busy reading the magazine to talk to me. And that’s when I finally got the clue and I realized our friendship with over. So that was the short time I had a friend around twelve or thirteen.

[00:34:45] I began being afraid of the demons the demons were something that was talked about a lot in our congregation and they Jehovah’s Witnesses publications. We were warned about them. We were told that they were out to get us and that they were invisible. They were from Satan. I started at that age having having kind of visions of demons. I would go to bed and I had to go to bed pretty early so I laid there awake for a while and I would start seeing shapes in the darkness. And I was sure it was demons. I was really scared. I was so scared that I could move. Most of the time one day I got up out of bed and I wanted to I thought if I went and slept in the living room on the couch maybe that would help. It was a different place. I was tired of being scared so I turned the light on really really low. We had a dimmer light so I just put it almost as low as it would go so as not to disturb the rest of my family who was sleeping and I talk to myself in on the couch and and I thought okay maybe this is a fresh start. I don’t even have to think about think about the demons but I kept seeing things even in the living room and the light it was just a dimmer switch. But it started turning itself off. I was so afraid that I was definitely not going to be able to move I couldn’t scream. It made me feel sick. I was so scared.

[00:36:35] I started trying to talk to people about my experiences I didn’t really want to tell them what I was feeling and case they made fun of me. But I asked them if they had ever had experiences with these demons. I asked people that I respected and that I thought of as logical not as really emotional people but people that I thought if if somebody was gonna tell me that this that these demons are all in my head it’s gonna be these people but they actually all had stories that they thought were demons. One of them I can look back on and tell you for sure it was probably a lightning bolt in an attic that was the light. The lady was saying and she told but she assured me no it was definitely the demons I knew and my I knew in my heart that I was never hurt by anything that I saw it was just things that I saw. But it was just so afraid of them that it made it feel real and I hoped that it was just all in my head. But everything that I had learned taught me that it was real and I shouldn’t be afraid I couldn’t live like that forever and the only thing that I could think of to do with that much emotion was to redirect it and I was actually able to do that. I began to transfer my emotions from fear of demons in to love for God. I would pray to him and I would talk to him and I would think about the things he said and it worked began to lose my fear of the demons.

[00:38:22] I could sleep at night and my love for God began to grow with such a huge. It was very fast just as strong as my fear had been. I can look back at it now and definitely say romanticised my relationship with God I didn’t have a clear view of him because of what I had read in the Bible. I had really created something in my head that I had attached to it was a nice to have almost like an invisible friend who cared about me and paid attention to me all the time and I felt excited like I really had gotten it. This is what everyone talks about when they say a relationship with God. I cried at the assemblies and the meetings when they would play a song I would tear up. It meant a lot to me. But it was all kind of overblown as well as very emotional. At age 15 I was baptized. I should. According to the people in my congregation I should have been baptized earlier than I was. I was really taking a little too long but I did get baptized. I was really looking forward to coming up out of the water and having the Holy Spirit come down on me like a dove just like Jesus said had when I came up out of the water I didn’t feel anything at all and I really was kind of taken aback by that. I thought I was good I have this extra layer of protection.

[00:40:03] That’s what my religion had promised me that when I was baptized I would have an extra layer of holy spirit from God and he was going to help me do the right things and I didn’t feel any of that. I was afraid that that meant I was doing something wrong so I just worked harder and working harder made me feel a little better about doing all the right things and. And so I would I would make I would answer the questions in the question and answer sessions. Part of our meetings with so much emotion I pretty much read it from the paragraph I would use my own words but I said exactly what it said. I just said it like I really meant it. I was homeschooled beginning with high school and everyone in my congregation told me that I was not going to be able to do this by myself. They knew my family pretty well. They knew my mom did not think highly of education. They knew that we heard that I had been taught that if something was hard I should give up and I actually took what they said and turn that into a little bit of fuel. I really wanted to prove to myself and to everybody else that I could do this thing. And in my specific school that my mom signed me up for it was an accredited homeschooling course. They send you a big pile of books and a big pile at test books and you study the book and then you take the test. And I was at first I was just rolling through books. I was getting them done. I had some pretty good grades and I felt really good. I was so determined. And I was getting it done.

[00:42:09] My mom would come in after I’ve been working on schoolwork for a couple hours maybe two and she would say you’ve been working so hard. I want you to take a break. Let’s go to Wal-Mart. I’ll buy you some. I’ll buy you a doughnut and my I don’t know it don’t it sounds pretty good. So we went to Wal-Mart and I got a doughnut. And three hours later when I finally got home then the kids were home from school from elementary school. And there was no way I was getting more work done. And I was just going to wait till tomorrow. Well a couple of times do and that and I realized that this was this was not going to I wasn’t going to get my school work done if if she kept doing that. And so I actually started turning her down and she would go by herself to the grocery store and I would get a whole lot done while she was gone. And I felt good about getting that done. It was one of the first things that I had ever put my mind to. And and done myself. And then my mom had a baby. I was 15 and when my youngest sister was born and my mom was a little bit older and she had a few health problems and she really kind of needed some help some extra help. And I was thrilled to do that. I was excited about that my little sister. I’d always loved playing with my little sisters and taken care of them and getting them ready for school and all that and it made me feel important. And helpful.

[00:43:47] I would teach them things I would teach them how to tie their own shoes in and button buttons and I’d fix their hair and wash their face in their hands. I really liked doing it. And with this with this brand new baby I had even more responsibility with my sisters. My mom started calling me Little mommy because I did so much with my sister. I whenever the baby woke up from her nap I’d give her a bottle and I change her and I give her. I always gave the girl all of my sisters there abouts because mom got grumpy when she was in the bathroom because it was hot in there. So I raised her and I I did everything except get up with her in the middle of the night. At at a point though. My mom actually realized that she wasn’t being a mother and she was allowing me to do almost everything in raising this little girl. And so she said My little sister was 3 when this happened and she said no it’s your it’s time that ice that I actually take care of her instead of you doing all the things. And I was actually pretty sad about that. I felt like I had something important that I was doing but that was taken away from me and I wasn’t needed anymore. So it was. But that was a letdown. I definitely went back to my school work. I had slacked off on that quite a bit because well I was raising a kid. And so I wrote to I went back to my schoolwork.

[00:45:38] I wrote a lot of letters to people and I actually even heard back from what are the people that I wrote letters to. Most of the people seemed to like my letters and they’d write back. My grandmother did. And a few other people that I had remembered my congregation that had moved away. But a different family member actually told me once that if I didn’t have anything to write in my letters then I didn’t have to write a letter which was kind of a kick in the stomach to me because in my opinion I never had anything happening to write about. I didn’t leave the house. I didn’t do any things so that meant I really shouldn’t write anymore letters and so I didn’t write that lady anymore letters. I did write except I kept writing to other people though that was one of the few communications that I really had outside of the people in my congregation. I never actually graduated high school. I tried to finish my school work but I never made it. In fact some of the things that happened around the age of 16 led to my being depressed. It was definitely a situational depression and when I look back on it I can know I can see what it was that led up to it. My mom had spent so much time telling me stories. When I got up in the morning before I could get all my schoolwork she told me the stories that made her look impressive and wanted me to be impressed with her. The same one she told me when I was a kid and so I learned to stay in bed until my dad came home for lunch everyday so I slept till noon every day.

[00:47:44] I was starting to learn that I had no control over my life when I wanted something to happen. It was not likely to happen. There was one day in particular we were going out of town for a day trip which was very rare and one of my sisters got sick and we had to turn around and go back home. I had done everything to make this trip happen. I’m so excited we were finally going somewhere and I couldn’t control everything. I couldn’t stop my sister from getting sick and we didn’t go. It was a good lesson for me but it was really hard because I wasn’t sure how I was ever going to be able to make my life any better. Another lesson about my lack of control over others was one of the most traumatizing ones I’d ever face in my life. My dad had an assembly. He always got mad and one of us always got hit. But this time I was old enough to see what was happening. I saw it coming. I knew he was gonna take his anger out on one of my little sisters and so when it started happening I jumped in and I tried to intervene and I couldn’t make him stop. He did hit my sister. Anyway I took that really hard because I really thought I could stop it. And I couldn’t he did it anyway. Like I said it was traumatizing for me. I went out in the door to door ministry a lot during this time but there was not many people who were actually going out.

[00:49:42] So I was just with one boring older man quite a bit out in the door to door ministry or just a few older people. It wasn’t it didn’t go well. And so then I stopped going out so much and I started getting looked down on because suddenly I had been a darling who was doing all the right things in the congregation. And now here I am not doing as much and I was a disappointment. I was supposed to be doing it full time. The door to door ministry but I didn’t and I was I was I was very much a disappointment at that. For those around me at other keys to this depression was when I lost my job. Yeah I had actually had a job. There was one lady in our congregation who had a cleaning job and she was going to be retiring. She was retirement age and she taught me how to do this job. There was a lot of special things involved with this cleaning job. We did their laundry and their dishes and and all that kind of thing. So she taught me the job. And I did it with her and that was pretty special to me. I loved that job I loved. She called me her cleaning partner. And for somebody to think of me as a partner that was really cool. She talked to me like an adult and she expected me to to get myself to work and get myself back home. And it was nice to have somebody treat me like I could do things instead of the way my parents always had where they tried to hold me back and keep me small and doing nothing.

[00:51:37] And I guess I should’ve known that was too good to last. My parents were never gonna let me do this job. When the lady was at my partner anymore. That was the whole point of the job I was supposed to myself. But when they started in on well but what if it snows. How are you going to get to your job and. And you’re going to be taking our car. You don’t have your own car. How are we going to. How are we going to deal without our car once a week. And I knew then it was hopeless that that job was not going to happen and it didn’t. I wasn’t it wasn’t allowed to do the job anymore. And when it went away I was really disappointed. I had nothing left. The last straw was a really small thing. I had watched little women the movie I’d read the book several times as a little girl and loved it. And when I saw the movie with some friends it was just at that right moment and watching that movie I realized I didn’t have anything going on in my life. I didn’t have any special talents like all those little women did. I didn’t have friends. Everything I thought that was going to be good had ended. And I definitely became depressed. I didn’t know at the time that it was depression. People told me that I was I knew that I felt. I felt like I was sick. I had really low energy. I didn’t see a reason to get out of bed in the morning.

[00:53:19] And my mom took me to the doctor and the doctor said there’s nothing wrong your. It’s something else because you’re physically you’re fine. College was never an option. We were not allowed to go to college so even if I had been able to finish high school. Jehovah’s Witnesses really discourage you from going to college. I I never really knew anybody that did. I knew one girl who went to nursing school and she was rather scandalous but I didn’t have any real prospects. There wasn’t. I don’t have a schedule. I had the money for a car because I had to. I had worked I gone to I had done my job with with my partner that cleaning job I had done it for long enough to where I at I had like 2000 dollars. And I wanted to get a car with that money but no way were my parents gonna let me get a car. I hadn’t. I had no no boyfriend. I knew that if I didn’t get married pretty quick I was going to be on the shelf so to speak. And I didn’t even know anybody that I could be interested in at did. I didn’t I didn’t have much. I was pretty unhappy. My parents were happy because I was at home and I had nothing to do and the only thing I had was them. And so if they wanted something from me or needed something from me I was always there for them. Much like the way I transferred my fear of demons over to Love of God I suddenly did the same thing with my depression. We went on.

[00:55:17] My family went on one of their trips to Michigan. We went about once a year to see my grandparents and when we went to my grandparents house this time we actually went to a place nearby called Warren Dunes. It’s sand dunes by Lake Michigan and I loved that place. We didn’t go there very often at all but for some reason this time we did. I knew because of my depression I did not have the energy to climb that dune so everybody else went up and I just walked on the beach all by myself. I will never forget that day. It was a beautiful day. The water was freezing cold the sun was shining. There were people writing and laughing that I was actually about myself for once. And I just suddenly decided that I was going to be happy. I think looking back on it there was a mixture of acceptance that my life might not ever change of gratitude for the things that I actually did have that I was happy about and a whole lot of denial. I was always pretty good at denial but I think this is when I personally decided that it was a good course for me to live my life by it was enough to lift my depression. I wasn’t happy but I wasn’t depressed. There was a really special occasion in our congregation. We were hosting these circuit and district overseers there and our congregation. It’s like the elders are the bosses but then the boss said the elder would be the circuit overseer and the boss of both of them would be the district overseer.

[00:57:20] So this was a really special person who was coming and we were hosting them. We were we would feed them meals and he would give us specials special talks. I was pretty excited about this my whole life. I wanted to work and the door to door ministry with one of these special people that the circuit overseer or the District Overseer. And finally I had the chance to work out in service with the district overseers wife. It was quite an honor. And as our group left should go in the door to door ministry. I was I was just really excited about this day and I felt like no longer being in my depression and deciding that I was going to be happy with something that God was blessing by allowing me this privilege. I went to one of the first doors with the district Overseer’s wife. We were out in the country. It was a farm house and as she and I walked up to the door we knocked on the front door. No one answered the door. Pretty common when you go door to door. What I was witnesses a lot of people answer the door. But she was pretty sure she had seen someone out back working and the farm and she decided we should walk back there and see if we could talk to the person and and give him give him our message. It was a long way back there but as we were walking back there she took a moment to talk to me.

[00:58:57] She had an opportunity here to encourage and mold a young person who was looking up to her and she took that opportunity to tell me that she disapproved of my dress I was wearing an incredibly modest sundress and a pair of sandals. Did I mention we were in a farm. There were chickens running around. She was wearing a silk blouse with a big bow at the throat a long sleeved suit jacket and suit skirt. Stockings and a pair of sensible pumps. She struggled a little bit walking through the grass but it did not slow her down and telling me that I was dressed appropriately. I should have covered my legs with stockings and I should have covered my arms with a sweater. She did tell me that she herself felt that she felt that a person’s arm should always be covered to the wrists but she didn’t feel like that was a necessary burden to put on. Everyone felt that I should at least have covered my arms to my elbows. I who is. I felt like the wind was taken out of my sails. I couldn’t believe this is what she was choosing to go on about. She looked crazy walking through a farm in a suit. I looked appropriate and modest. I knew I was dressed in a in an appropriate way. I didn’t feel bad about our council. I just felt like she was being very condescending and she was Raum I also at that time began hearing a few stories from some of the older ones that I had made friends with in my congregation about people who had been mean to them in the congregation.

[01:01:01] The first couple stories I was defensive about and taken aback by because we were told as Jehovah’s Witnesses that we had a lovely world wide brotherhood that the people around us who weren’t Jehovah’s Witnesses worldly people we would call them they were not loving and they would try and say mean things and do mean things. But all of our brothers and sisters as we called each other we were always the we were always loving and it was like a utopia so to hear some of these stories that actually matched a few of my experiences where people had looked down on me and judged to me because I wasn’t doing enough as they decided or what this woman had done where she judged me for my clothes. I heard stories about people who were being made fun of for not going out the door to door ministry as often as others thought they should. I had had that done to me. I even heard stories about people who were being made fun of for their weight. I was horrified by that. I mean I had always been made fun of for being skinny but it just felt mean meaner. I guess that there were people that I cared about who were being laughed at for being overweight. And that was it really hurt me. I couldn’t believe that people would be so mean especially since they weren’t supposed to be we were told they weren’t. And it just didn’t match up. So I found that a little a little hard to wrap my mind around and I just kind of pushed it to the side and I said I wouldn’t. I just wouldn’t. I wasn’t going to look at it.

[01:02:59] I wasn’t going to listen to stories like that was going to return like I didn’t listen. Like it didn’t happen. The denial really helped me out again and I never did make friends at the congregation. There were a couple actually met a couple guys that I liked. I liked them as friends for sure I definitely didn’t want a relationship with them but once they realize I wasn’t interested in a relationship with them they moved on to different people anyway. There was one young man who came to see me I thought but then the next week he eloped with a worldly girl it was quite scandalous and I just felt let down. I thought I had an opportunity to meet somebody nice but apparently I hadn’t. Then one sister asked if I was interested in seeing anyone mentally in my head. I immediately went through the boxes. Is it appropriate for me to be dating. I am 19 so yes. Is it. Am I in good standing with the congregation. Yes. I haven’t done anything to get in troubles so the answer to that question is yes I am interested in seeing someone and so she told me about her friend a young man at a congregation that she had met that she was going to have come visit me. I was so excited. I had never even had an opportunity to meet many young men and at 19 it was getting a little iffy there. Most of the people I knew were married at 19 or 20 even 18. So it was the fact that I didn’t know somebody to get married to was a little worrying. When Mike came to visit.

[01:04:59] I mean I don’t know about love at first sight. What I did feel was an immediate strong liking that has gotten stronger consistently ever since he was kind attentive. He was respectful to my family and to me. He was also decisive and confident. He was independent. He lived by himself not with his parents. He had his own house. He was everything I was looking for except cooking. I really wanted somebody that cooked and he did not cook. But I decided I liked him anyway. He came to see me as often as he could and I really enjoyed my time with him. We talked and talked and talked two weeks after I met Mike. My friend Chris died. Cried when I heard the news. Chris was somebody that I had known when I was a little kid. He lived in a congregation nearby and sometimes his family and my family would get together and the kids would all play. He was the closest thing I had to a friend. I wrote letters to Abe when he moved away to two moved several states away to North Carolina and I felt like he was he was the I mean here’s the closest thing I had to a friend and when he died I was really sad about it. He was 18 and it was a tragic thing. Mike was the only person who seemed to care about my loss. Nobody in the congregation asked me how I was doing. I was crying. Everybody was around and I saw that and they didn’t really seem to notice or care.

[01:06:53] My family didn’t ask me how I was feeling but Mike asked me to tell them about stories that I remembered about Chris and he asked me to tell he he gave me the space to talk about it. It was it was really nice to have somebody who actually cared. I went to the funeral and I went at Main’s I travelled by myself for the very first time. I was pretty excited about that. Here I was at 19 on my own going and somewhere I had to find my own way through the airport. I had never gone anywhere by myself except like maybe two to the library. But even then I had my sisters with me when I got there. I really enjoyed my time with cursus family I know there was a big group. They were all together they were all remembering fun times that they had had with Chris. I met Chris friends. He had quite a few friends in his congregation. He was pretty popular it’s got to get a little glimpse into the life he was living in. It was a really nice look at someone who was living a life that was different than mine. Because Chris was able to go places his parents encouraged him to do things and it made me see my life a little differently I realized how much I had missed out on because of my parents when I got home. There were roses waiting by the front door. My mom jumped to tell me that she was sure those roses were from Chris’s family to say thank you for going to the funeral.

[01:08:52] I assumed when I saw the roses that they were from my boyfriend and I told her so that she was sure no no and was very disappointed when she found out that yes they were indeed from my boyfriend who was very thoughtful and knew that I was hurting and sent me the roses so that I knew that he was thinking at my parents never liked Mike they called him. They told me that he was he was not a very good Jehovah’s Witness. He wasn’t serious enough about it. They told me that he was disrespectful to his parents. I guess that’s because he didn’t treat his parents in the exact same way that I treated mine which was to do everything they wanted. He worked by himself. So he had his own life he didn’t call them when he left his house. I can I think most my parents didn’t like Mike because they knew I did. And they knew I was going to be getting married to him and they didn’t want that to happen. They didn’t want to lose what they had Mike and I had a very small wedding and our extended family came. And even though they weren’t Joe’s witnesses they came to our wedding and they joined us later on at a restaurant. We had a went without Nate dinner after I finished eating dinner I realized that I could go to my new house all alone with my husband. I’ve never been alone with him before. Jehovah’s Witnesses have rules about dating and you have to have a chaperone at all times. We really had never been alone together. And so for us to to actually just be the two of us it was really really awesome.

[01:11:05] The right of the whole ride back to his house to to our house. We just talked about how great it was there was no more people jumping all over both of us and talking to both of us and trying to pull us in opposite directions and and telling us that each other was bad for each other and it was it was so nice it was quiet and we just we just hung out. Starting our marriage I had a lot of growing up to do. My parents had not prepared to me to be a wife. They hadn’t even really allowed me to be a person. I had a lot to learn. I had to learn to do the obvious things like cooking. Following a budget man I bought myself a bag of rice every week and I just state rice for lunch because it was way too hard to figure out what to cook myself for lunch while my husband was at work. And then I had to figure out dinner afterwords. I was a mess. I think everybody’s a mess when they learn first learned to cook but I didn’t have any buddy to tell me how to do it. I really didn’t want to call my Pam call my mom and ask her for help she usually didn’t help much anyway. I had to learn to do all the little things by myself that my parents had always done for me that I hadn’t even noticed that I wasn’t doing for myself. All learned to set an alarm clock when I wanted to get up.

[01:12:52] I had to learn that I needed to figure out what time to get up so that I could set the alarm clock. I had to learn that I needed to know what time we needed to leave to get to a place on time and to allow myself enough time to get ready. I just didn’t know anything. It was quite a learning curve and it was pretty hard on Mike because he had to help me learn a lot of those things. Plus I’d never been in a healthy relationship before. I had never really seen one modeled. I was sure dying to be in a healthy relationship but it was pretty rough. I tried to just automatically set up the relationship my parents had had tried to keep my husband happy. No matter what I ignored my own feelings and pretended like they didn’t exist and it didn’t work very well and Mike kept saying that I was unhappy and he was right. He told me that I needed to be paying more attention to what I wanted out of life. I needed to dream. I needed to find things that were going wrong and try to make them go better come up with ways to fix them instead of just putting up with those problems. We struggled together in the congregations that we went to. We were both starting over in a brand new congregation and it was hard we didn’t really make friends again. That loving Brotherhood kept coming up. I thought I would finally have a chance to make friends because there are people my age now in this congregation I would walk up to a group of women who are talking and awkwardly try to jump in to this circle of conversation and sometimes it was OK.

[01:14:59] And most of the time it was just awkward and they just talked as if I wasn’t there. I definitely wasn’t welcomed. And Mike felt a lot the same way. We neither of us really found people that we connected with and that wanted us to be around. I felt confusing. We went to the meetings regularly even though nobody noticed if we would have missed them. We were pretty proud of ourselves for learning how to do that. Especially that period of time we were working nights. We worked nights together we loved working together. We cleaned which is a job. So many Jehovah’s Witnesses have because well you can’t go to college. And I hadn’t yet graduated high school. So cleaning was the thing we could do. Mike was pretty uncomfortable with the fact that I hadn’t graduated high school and I was too I was really embarrassed about it. So he helped me to get my G.T.. I already knew most of the things I needed to know math math was always a mess for me. So he helped me a lot with math and we went over to win over it. And I went. He helped me figure out where to go and we got it all signed up in. And I would go and I took all the tests for the GOP. And I remember I got done way before a lot of the other people who were taking the test.

[01:16:47] So I was really nervous that I had probably just messed it all up so I went over all the questions again and made sure just double checked all my answers and then I left and went to the library waited for everyone else to get done. And in the end I graduated with a really great grade and I got my G.T.. And it felt really good. I was so proud of having set my mind to something and done it. And it was so nice to have somebody help me do it to instead of feel like I had to do it by myself. I called my mom because I was really excited about it. And I told her I told her mom I got my G.T. and she was like look she really didn’t care. There was definitely not a graduation party for me. My husband began to get more responsibilities and our congregation because he was a man a brother. He was given responsibilities. The sisters were never allowed to do anything like this but he would carry that microphones up and down for the question and answer sessions during our meetings. He would work in the magazine department and book department handing out literature so that people could go in the door to door ministry and place that literature with those and that we met in our ministry or he would run the soundboard sometimes so that the meetings were we would be able to talk on the microphones. He played the songs and all that he found all of those things they were supposed to be an honor and a privilege.

[01:18:41] But he found them really frustrating because they were so disorganized and he would find out that the people who who were working alongside him didn’t care if everything was taken care of and the way that they were supposed to one of the things that Jehovah’s Witnesses are incredibly proud of is that they are such an organized religion. We will hear the scripture about how God does things by arrangement and Jehovah’s Witnesses have what they run like clockwork and everyone takes their job seriously. And and he wasn’t seeing that happening around him. He felt like he was the only one who was really trying to do everything just right. And he would talk to me about it. I got a little defensive. He wasn’t displaying a very good attitude. Everything about Jehovah’s Witnesses was supposed to be great. And he’s trying to point out things that aren’t great. I had decided when I was a teenager that I didn’t like hearing stories that weren’t great because I didn’t know what to do with that information. And when he brought it up it messed with my vision of what Jehovah’s Witnesses were supposed to be. So I got defensive the deeper I got into my denial. The harder it was on Mike because it wasn’t just his job as witnesses that I was in denial was about a lot of things in life. He would ask for me constantly to be a partner with him. He just when it’s someone who would walk in life next to her he said you’re always walking behind me. And it meant that Mike was the one who had to make all the decisions. He was the one who had to anticipate things to plan things. I like it that way because I didn’t have to do anything. And I told him that and he would he told me how unfair that was to him.

[01:21:08] I was able to see it but I wasn’t very sure that I was going to be able to help him with what he wanted help with. I was so inexperienced I felt like a burden. And as I had learned as a little girl if you’re bothering someone you get punished. I felt stupid Mike assured me that I was not stupid. I was just Incs inexperienced and that I needed to try doing things flat because of the way he was raised when I did try to do things. I ended up making a mess and he wanted to not have to deal with them. So he would often just take it over and just do it just so that it was done right and he didn’t have more things to deal with. It wasn’t the best relationship we were trying hard to be good for each other. We weren’t always very good for each other. He was constantly overburdened and he blamed himself for whatever went wrong and our lives. I was constantly worried about his feelings. And I blamed myself for not making him happy. It didn’t work very well. But we were using what we were taught at the meetings if we worked harder all the time never feeling like we were doing enough.

[01:22:39] If we went to all of the meetings and went in the door to door ministry work if we prayed and asked God for help we would be blessed it’s just not what was working we were doing all of those things we were doing all the things that we had seen our parents do and other relationships and the congregations we had attended we were taking advice that we were given about working harder and honestly things just got worse. Our perfectionism really got strong in both of us and it was not making us happy. Mike was told one day from someone he was chatting with on the internet about ADT I mean we had heard of it but he didn’t know much about it. And the person told him that he might want to look into it because the person said from what I’ve learned about you talking to you I think you might have it learning about my husband’s 80 was life changing for us. It was amazing because we read a book that was recommended by this man and it talked about things that we can’t control. The book explained things about how our brain works. It talked about how we can’t control everything around us. And these are the things that happen when you try to do that. It talked about how we mess things up sometimes just because our brains are messed up and learning all those things. It just took a big burden off of our shoulders for both of us because we started to understand that not everything that went wrong was something we could control and it wasn’t all our fault. That’s what we’ve been taught growing up. It was true. It wasn’t all our fault. We actually started being a little bit easier on ourselves and not hating ourselves so much. Both of us we started to understand a little bit of mindfulness. We had some better tools they use when we felt awful about ourselves who weren’t alone in our struggle anymore.

[01:25:48] We finally had this book that we had read that made it that made Mike especially feel understood me to it helped me to understand Mike better and helped me to understand myself. We started reading a lot more books like that. We weren’t supposed to self-help books were really looked down on and Joe was witnesses because they told us that everything we needed to know came from the religion. And if we’d couldn’t get it at the Kingdom Hall we didn’t need it. But we started realizing we needed this and we started reading a lot more books we learned about perfectionism. I learned how to be honest about my own feelings and actually share my feelings with my husband instead of hiding them like my momma taught me to do. I went to actually listened to him when he told me how he was feeling or what he wanted. Instead of trying to anticipate his feelings and wishes and I found out I kind of had some things wrong and I was able to make. We were able to make each other a lot happier once we were able to actually what I was actually honest with him about who I was. We started setting better boundaries with each other. I started understanding that it wasn’t my responsibility to manage the feelings in the house. It was my responsibility to manage mine and let him have his own feelings. He started understanding that he doesn’t have to make everything happen in our life and he could relax a little bit. We learned to love each other in a healthier way. It was a really first step towards an evolutionary process that took years and years of learning.

[01:28:09] But our relationship just got better and better because we started taking in information from places other than I was witnesses. One day we got a letter in the mail that said we owed fifty thousand dollars in back taxes. There was a big punch in the gut. We knew we were behind our taxes but that denial thing sherd has come in handy and we didn’t have the money to pay for any of that so we just ignored it. But we’d been getting healthier and seeing life differently. And when we cut that fifty thousand dollar bill we knew we had to do something about it it was just gonna get bigger and bigger. If we didn’t pay it it was actually my idea to put it in God’s hands. I said let’s just. This is too heavy for me to carry. Let’s just tell God that it’s up to him. He can’t send us work if he thinks we should work more and we will do whatever comes. We will do it. Anything that comes our way we won’t say no to any of it we’ll just do it. I have to admit that my idea was in a way a bit of a defense play because my husband was talking about working really really hard to get it all paid off. He had been listening to Dave Ramsey and Dave Ramsey’s idea is that you get Gizelle intense and you just throw money at this bill until it gets paid off and then it’s gone. I like the idea of that fly.

[01:30:24] I also knew that my husband could get really excited about things and he would dive into something and he had more energy about the thing than I did. And I found it overwhelming sometimes. So when I suggested that we put things in God’s hands I honestly believed that God was going to send us work in just the right amount so that I didn’t get too tired. And we still worked more and made enough money to pay all of this off. Well it didn’t exactly work that way. A lot of people needed a lot of things cleaned. And since my idea was we weren’t gonna say no. We said yes. And we Tedford Atli got a little too tired. We worked 14 hour days almost every day. We usually had one day a week off where we just crashed but we often were Sunday’s too. There was one day or there’s one period of time where we worked. I think it was 34 days straight. And we were actually during that time doing some house sitting on top of all the cleaning. So we weren’t even going home. It was exhausting. I wasn’t a good partner during this time. I was frustrated because my idea of putting thing in God’s hands wasn’t working that way I thought it was gonna God was letting me down. And I was mad about it didn’t say much to my husband about that because it did not feel right to talk bad about God. I really was disappointed. I decided this is not a good mentality for me to have not a good attitude. I need to accept what God gives me. And so I started on my headphones at work.

[01:32:43] I would listen to books from Javas witnesses and I thought this will help me out. It was no new information. It was all the same stuff I’d always heard at the meetings. My entire life growing up just do or do more work go to all the meetings and you’ll be happy. I had tried that and I couldn’t go to all the meetings right now because we were working 14 hour days. So I decided instead I was going to listen to the Bible. I listened to the Gospels first and I really liked what I heard about Jesus was one story about Jesus that fathered me knowing what I knew at this point in my life about how love was supposed to work. I didn’t like that one. One little story. Everything was great. So. So that was okay. Good home. I could ignore that. So I really worked hard to get the mind of Jesus look at things the way that I thought Jesus would. He was a very understanding man very loving very forgiving then I decided that I was going to read about the way that God dealt with the Israelites. So I started in Joshua Judges I was absolutely horrified at what I was reading. I could not believe it God was mean I know I had heard these stories growing up to say the things he did he was killing people left and right. And seemingly nothing. He decided he wanted throw away and so he killed them all. I just didn’t jive with Jesus and Jesus was supposed to be a perfect reflection of God. I talked to Mike about some of my concerns about the Bible.

[01:34:48] And he was pretty taken aback by the fact that I was saying some of the things I was saying about God and he seemed pretty uncomfortable with it and I don’t like making people uncomfortable so I kept it to myself. I was like I’ll get this figured out at some point. But for now I’m going to go back to good old and I’ll then I’ll always works. I decided to move on to read about the congregations that Paul wrote to some of his letters. And I read about Paul and I realized he changed a lot of things Jesus had said some pretty simple things and Paul was making new rules. I didn’t really see where Jesus had given him the authority to but maybe he had. And then Paul made a lot of rules that kind of Mam’selle like a jerk like that either. So I put that at the denial box to I really just kind of put the whole Bible in the denial box. I was like if I’m not understanding this it’s not making me feel better not making me closer to God. I just decided that I was told that God was a loving father and I was just going to make up a character in my head of who God was. I had done that when I was a teenager romanticized who God was and it worked. I felt good. So I tried to do it again and it didn’t really work but I kept trying. Instead it learned at work I started listening to podcasts. I was in a more self-help books and learned more tools. But those podcasts taught me something different.

[01:36:35] They taught me about other people I had always been told about worldly people and how they were always out to get you. But when I listen to podcasts I would listen to a story podcast ones where people would just tell about their life something that had happened something that had gone wrong or gone right sudden they struggled with identified so much with these people they were being so open and so real people in my congregation when I tried to be like that with him they didn’t like it. They shut down. It wasn’t really safe. As one of Jehovah’s Witnesses to really let people see who you were or what you liked because they were they were ready to judge you so quickly. It wasn’t it wasn’t a good idea to be vulnerable with them. But the vulnerability I was seeing from people on podcasts that was beautiful and I felt close to those people I never met them but their stories really really touched a nerve with me like they would talk about some of the ways they were treated in their religion and it matched a lot of what I had gone through or they would talk about feeling like they weren’t doing everything right. And I felt that way a lot. It was really cool to identify with people even though I had never met them also because they were spending so much time around our clients the people we cleaned for. I really started to get to know them as people. I had the floor.

[01:38:19] But now with it they were the only people in my life because it was just a work and sleep while we were paying off the taxes and working so much. I really started to get to know with these people man they are some really great people that we cleaned for and that we still clean. For they were caring and interested in me and in like they asked us how things were going. They cheered us on everybody in our congregation who we had talked to about paying off our taxes was very very against what we were going to do. They said we shouldn’t waste our time paying off these taxes take paying off this tax debt because the world was going to end so soon just ignore it and live your life. They said we should be doing more important things like going in the door to door ministry full time and we should be working less instead of more. My mother in law even told us flat out you’ll fail you’re not going to pay these taxes off and if you somehow do is just going to be something else that comes up so it’s not worth trying. But our clients were cheering us out. They said I’m so proud of you for working so hard. Look at what you guys are doing and they would leave us little notes or they would be there and talk to us in person and just chat with us about life and what was happening. I felt like I was making actual friends even though I wasn’t supposed to. But I liked him a lot more. Well we finally did get our debt paid off. It was such a good feeling. It was it was totally worth it.

[01:40:21] All that hard work it was worth it to get fifty thousand dollars in debt that was hanging over us. It was just gone. We paid it all off. The debt was done and we were good. It was a really great feeling and now we were ready to go start going back to meetings again start giving more attention to Jehovah giving more attention to our spirituality. But it didn’t go very well despite we have taken it a whole lot of information about healthy living. We have changed our lives a lot. And people were disappointed in us when we went back cause we had been gone people told. I actually had one person tell me that it wasn’t a success because we didn’t do it the way God said to bitch she by which she meant we didn’t do it the way Jehovah’s Witnesses said to which was go to the meetings and ignore all those other things we just kept trying harder to fit in and make it work because that’s all we really knew how to do just try harder. I just wasn’t working. And we kept getting more and more frustrated at the meetings because that healthy love that we had learned about it was not being shown at those meetings. It was not being encouraged or commanded it wasn’t being practiced. N it was really uncomfortable because if this issue really God’s one true religion if this is really a loving brotherhood of people then it should be working better than it was working. I think around that time that Mike was kind of done with trying harder. But I wasn’t I needed one more good push. So when they announced that there would be an international convention.

[01:42:51] I said this is it. This was like the most special thing that regular everyday Joe as witnesses could go to. Usually you had to be a special person to go. But because it was in our area we were allowed to go to this special convention. It was a weekend of information that was given to us that was supposed to be like really good information stuff straight from the top. And if any meeting will be just what we need it was going to be this one when we got there I realized my mistake. Listening to the information they were telling us it was no different than everything we had heard at any other meeting. It wasn’t healthy boundaries. It wasn’t healthy loving relationships. It wasn’t healthy ways of viewing ourselves. They just kept telling us that we needed to work harder that we were good for nothing slaves of God. They told us that we should be working less at our jobs. And giving more and more to God the people I knew around me were already turning to government assistance because they were working so much less. They were already moving to trailers instead of their house because it was cheaper. They were giving so much and they were just being told to give more. It didn’t feel right. And Mike was really uncomfortable with all the information as while he was getting angrier. I was getting sadder. I cried because I I knew I just knew it was over. I couldn’t go to any more of these meetings. And I didn’t know where we were supposed to go from there.

[01:45:04] But I couldn’t be here. So I stopped crying I dried my tears and I turned to Mike and said if we leave now before the session is over we can beat the traffic here is like yeah let’s do that. So we we just left it felt so good. It was such a relief to walk out of that place and we just both knew that was the last one we were never go back. As we walked back to our car it was a really long walk but we were just so happy. And we drove back home. Asking about how I don’t know what the future holds. Right now I’m not even going to worry about that. I’m just glad I’m not there. Hearing these dysfunctional messages anymore and we both we both agreed we were not going back. Moving on from that point was hard because we didn’t know where to go our entire lives. Somebody had told us that if we had done everything just right. Card was gonna bless us and that’s all we had ever done is try to do everything just right. And what was just right now nobody was telling us what we should be doing. And I think we need just enough to realize that we were gonna have to figure out just right for ourselves. We were going to have to be in charge of our lives. Now one of the things that we realized that we were doing that we did not feel right about anymore was shunning Mike’s younger brother he when he was 19 had been kicked out of the congregation and he was shunned.

[01:47:28] And we had done what we were told and shunned him for 12 years is really hard to do that we missed him a lot. And we had learned enough about healthier love we knew that shunning was cruel and manipulative and it was not something that we were okay with doing it anymore. And so we sat down to have a serious discussion about arms reaching out to Mike’s younger brother and I gave Mike the OK. Mike wrote a letter. I think it is a Facebook message to his brother. We really we didn’t know where he lived. We knew he was in New York but that’s all we knew. And so he sent him a Facebook message and just said I’m sorry we did what we were told but we think that shunning is wrong and we think it’s me and we’re not going to do it anymore. So we would like to open back up our relationship with him with you. And Mike’s brother said yes. So they started chatting and we actually got to see him when he came here once we got to meet his wife for the first time. He had been married for a few years and we had never even met her never even seen pictures ever. It was so nice to see Mike and his brother together and feel like we were doing something good after having done something hurtful to him for so such a long time. We knew that not shunning Mike’s brother meant that we were gonna get in trouble ourselves. Biocon knew that his family wasn’t going to be happy with him and they weren’t.

[01:49:37] I kind of had a little leftover denial and I thought I really thought my family was going to. I didn’t think my family was going to shun me for talking to someone who was supposed to be shot. But they did. They did immediately as soon as they knew that we had gone to visit that and New York they immediately cut me off my my younger sister had her husband’s sister disfellowshipped kicked out of the congregation. And so she had a little bit of experience with shunning before. And what she learned from her experience with this other person was that if you ignore them completely. Sometimes they get desperate enough for their family that they will come back. Her brothers her head excuse me her husband’s sister did that. She came back because she missed her family so much. And from what I could tell my sister is pretty sure that if she does that to me I will also come back. I think she thinks it’s loving and she has done a very good job of keeping me out of her life completely. I cannot see pictures of any of her of her or her husband. I can’t see pictures of her children. She has me blocked on all social media. And if she were to run into me on the street she would turn the other way. My whole family is the same way. I don’t know anything that’s happening with them. Same with Mike’s family completely cut off Mike’s dad died. Last year and he was actually invited to go to hospice to say goodbye to his dad. That doesn’t happen often.

[01:51:55] And Javas witnesses a lot of times people have found out that their dad died or something like that from extended family or even worse they might read about it. In the newspaper the shunning is very very thorough. They see the people in the congregation t us as mentally disease apostates. Anyone who has left is an enemy of God. And they will at times cross on the other side of the street to avoid us. It’s not. It’s not an easy life. It’s a cruel thing. I always felt mean when I Shan to someone I just tried to not pay attention to it. But to be shunned you really feel the emptiness that they try to leave you with. Often when I went out the door to door ministry the people who saw me out would tell me that I was doing a good thing for God. They were proud of me for putting my faith into action. They didn’t understand is that I was doing it out of fear obligation and guilt fear that if I didn’t go in the door to door ministry God was going to destroy me obligation because he had done so much for me and I was taught that I was a good for nothing. Slave and any little thing that I could do was a drop in the bucket of what I owed him. So my time in the door to door ministry was just a little bit of a start of what I owed him and also guilt.

[01:54:05] If I had didn’t talk to the people that I met in my ministry about God and tell them what we called the truth about God then I was going to be blood guilty and I would have their souls to answer for a lot of people know that we didn’t celebrate holidays but I don’t think they know what that Jehovah’s Witnesses celebrate. Nothing. There was just absolutely nothing to be celebrated. We were so busy doing trying to do enough things to make God happy that we didn’t have time for a lot of fun. A lot of people I knew didn’t even take vacations. We really didn’t. When I was a kid my husband didn’t. When they were kids maybe every once in a while you go to a theme park but not much happened. Something I’ve learned since leaving the witnesses is that my life is my responsibility. It’s my job to look around me and say this is a good thing I should do it or this is a bad thing I shouldn’t do it. Instead of allowing a religion to guide me to be my moral compass and because of that I learned something called integrity my integrity. When I was one of Joe was witnesses was always to God but I learned that integrity actually means in doing being proud of who you are doing something that you would be proud of. Even when no one is watching and that’s made me feel a lot better about myself as a person. I’ve learned that I don’t have to live life feeling like I’m a victim of persecution all the time. Jeff as witnesses taught me that I was always just about to be persecuted for something but when I look at my life I see that’s not true. I was just being given a victim mentality and I’m actually my life is actually pretty good.

[01:56:14] And now I can do things I would have to say that my favorite thing that I’ve done since I’ve left would have to be the holidays. It’s been awesome. I had my very first birthday party ever a whole bunch of people came. I got a big pile of presents. I got to decorate the place. It was music and there was food. And everybody was excited for me. We’ve been invited. My husband I’d been invited to Thanksgiving at a few people’s houses and they welcomed us and to their family celebration. Thanksgiving is really great. That’s a that’s a lot of good food. Christmas that was really fun to be able to make an atmosphere in our house of celebration. This tree with lights on it and lots of glitter everywhere. And I mean it’s just been really cool to just let go and have fun. Celebrating the holidays is definitely my favorite part of not being one of Jehovah’s Witnesses anymore. This might sound cruel but if there was one thing I could say to my family I would tell them you weren’t there for me. You were so absorbed in your own souls that you didn’t take the time or the energy to listen to me or to help me or to even just see me. What I asked for help. I was usually ignored. I was told my problems weren’t as important as other people’s. And I needed to put them aside and try to fix the feelings of other people. Mom and Dad especially never saw me either as a as an adult.

[01:58:03] They each called me on the telephone exactly one time in 15 over 15 years that I had been married to my husband and it was about something small and stupid not to talk to me not to connect with me. When I left Jehovah’s Witnesses not one of my family tried to discourage me from leaving. Even though they thought I was going to be destroyed by God they didn’t even say goodbye. I have a lot of things that I’m looking forward to in my life. Moving ahead now I put the energy I use to give my family and to living my new life. I reach out to people who care about me and we go out and do fun things and we just talk. It’s a way more rewarding way to live. So definitely going out with friends is in my future. I want to go backpacking with my husband. We love hiking. We love camping. I want to go on lots of road trips and just see what’s around us probably to do more hiking. Because we love hiking. I want to get in better shape. I’ve actually been working out. I have time to do that now. I loved doing gardening. I love my art. I love all kinds of art things and I get to try them. Now I had the time and the energy to put into that and I plan on doing all of those things and maybe more. I took a circus class and if that comes up again I’ll probably do that again. I like trying all the little things that come up in life.

[01:59:53] Thank you for listening to this first episode of shows and now I’d like to help you tell your story. If you’re among the shunned out there and you’d like to take your voice back and share your story just go to my site at shunned podcast dot com and fill out the form to be contacted looking back at your life may not always be easy but it is often cathartic. And I’m going to make this process as easy as possible. Together we can help people feel less alone and shed light on what this cruel action of shunning does and let others know who uses it as a control tactic. For now my goal is to produce one of these episodes each month depending on how long these take to record and produce I may increase the frequency in the future. But I want to start out by putting out realistic expectations. If you don’t want to tell your own personal story I totally understand there are ways though that you can help and get involved. One of the things I want to do is to help show how many shunned people there are out there. If you are among the shunned have someone take a photo of you covering your face with your hands and tag it with a hashtag hashtag Shunda podcast and let’s spread this across social media. Second tell your friends about this podcast and review it. Nitens. If we want to shed light on this we need to get it out. And part of that is that we need good reviews on iTunes so that they will feature these stories and we need the people to spread this message by sharing the podcast with friends.

[02:01:31] I wanted to end each episode with a song chosen by each person that I interviewed but I can’t due to copyright or I can’t even play a clip. But I believe that music can help us express things that we don’t know how to express in the moment. So I’m going to end this with a song that Jenny chose for her journey and I’ll post a link to youtube for it on our site. And also if you can access the show notes from your phone and whatever podcast player you’re using you should be able to hear the song. I hope that by sharing these others can find songs that mean something to them as well. Now I’m going to steal my own words from my first podcast to end because the same applies here. Remember that others are fighting things that you might not realize and give them the benefit of the doubt love others do no harm and go be happy.