My Life As A Jehovah's Witness

I was born into the Jehovah’s Witnesses (JW’s) so I really had no choice as to whether I wanted to join or not.  My biological father passed away a month and a half before I was born.  It was a  prime time for the JW’s to befriend my mom.  This is one  of the best ways for cults or high-control groups use to convert new members.

My mom remarried when I was about a year and a half old.  My step-father didn’t want to inform me of my background so it was never discussed in our home.  In fact, he was an alcoholic so nothing was ever discussed in our home.  But that’s another story altogether.

Most of my childhood memories consist of meetings and field service (door to door work).  The meetings were boring and I usually spent as much time as possible helping new mothers.  That would give me the opportunity to sit in the mother’s room or in the back.  I hardly ever did personal study and if I did it was about half an hour before we left for the Kingdom Hall.

The one thing that I really missed when I was growing up was friends.  I was forbidden to associate with the kids that I went to school with.  My step-father actually had people from the town spy on me.  I can’t remember how many times he would come home from work and ask me what I was doing downtown at lunch time.  There weren’t any other children my age in our congregation.  The next person to my age was a year younger and we never really got along.  I was told that I have to be her friend because we were both JW’s and we had to set  a good example to others.  That is the greatest motivator for JW’s.  Everyone is constantly trying to set a good example to the rest of the big, bad world.

When I reached my teen years, things were really wrong.  My stepfather was mean and abusive.  I remember one time he actually kicked me in my knee with his cowboy boot because I was playing.  All I could think about was getting out.  I fantasized about my life free from my parents.   I wondered often who I would marry, were would I live, stuff like that.   To say they were strict is an understatement.  I wasn’t allowed to listen to the radio for fear of Satanic music.  I wasn’t allowed to associate with people who weren’t fellow JW’s.  This lack of socialization would be my downfall later.  When I did leave home I had the social skills of a young child.  Also, I believe that because of the home environment of  living with an alcoholic, my communications skills were very poor.  I will also include some links to sites that deal with adult children  of alcoholics.

I lived on my own for about a year after high school.  I wasn’t allowed to attend my graduation the following September.  I was told that if I went my parents wouldn’t talk to me anymore.  I should have just gone.

I didn’t.

Things on my own were slowly falling apart.  I still attended meetings but my field service was lacking.  I didn’t like going from door to door.  I was never a person to impose my ideas of feelings on others.  Probably because I didn’t have any of my own.  I was living with a girl the same age as me who was attending University to become a nurse.  She was kind of looked down upon because of this.  But her mom was considered spiritually weak for encouraging her to do so.  I was getting up at 4:00am to take the bus half way across the city to look after some ladies kids.  My ‘friend’ wanted me to do all the house work because she was too busy attending school.  But she wanted to do all the cooking.   She would fry everything and then bake it, and everything tasted the same.  I won’t even go into the methods she had to save money.  She wasn’t working just receiving money from her parents.  It was horrible.

At this same time the lady I was working for told me that she couldn’t afford to pay me to work for her anymore and stiffed me two weeks pay.  I couldn’t find work anywhere.  I don’t really remember what happened in detail but I moved out on my own and rented the second floor apartment from a sister from another congregation and went on welfare.  She was a single parent with two kids and lived with her mom, I think.  I tried to make ends meet.  I never had any food in my little apartment but it was so nice to have my own life away from my parents and private from the eyes of the JW's.

The new congregation wasn’t as loving or interested in me as my home congregation but there were a few young people my age.  Most of them were either new or seemed to be on the fringe.  We went out almost every weekend to a local club and laughed and danced.  It was good clean fun but a taboo none the less.   I sure wish I knew where they are now.  I was contacted by one the guys  (I think he liked me) after I was disfellowshipped and he was very disappointed.  He wanted to know what happened - but I couldn’t tell him.  I never heard from him again.  For some reason, I can’t remember any of their names and yet they were the closest thing I had to friends.

Sometime during this time a dangerous person joined our group outings.  I think that he might have been at someone’s house party but I don’t know for sure.  He figured out that I was the weak link in the group and an easy target.  And so he sets his plan in motion.  He asked me out on a date.  It will be a group of his friends of course (JW's aren't allowed to date unless with chaperones).  I was flattered that this perfect stranger had shown any interest in me.  I had just suffered a break up with someone I was interested in (I found out that he was engaged two weeks later).  I agreed to go to a movie with him.  When we get to the theater, he is surprised that none of his ‘friends’ have shown up.  We decide to watch the movie anyway.  After the movie he tells me that he is going to phone his friends and find out why they didn’t show up. 

(Warning bells should be going off by now) 

He comes back and tells me that something came up and they couldn’t make it but they will meet us at his house and we will watch movies there. 

(Bigger warning bells should be blaring now) 

We go back to his house and, surprise, there is no one there.  His mom has gone away on vacation so the whole place is empty.  He locks the door.  He has the house to himself.  He lives in the basement and It’s set up with a sitting area, a bedroom, and a weight room.  He goes and gets drinks and movies.  We watched movies for about an hour or two and then things get really scary.

He had everything set up perfectly.  I didn’t know it at the time but he has done this before and knows exactly what he’s doing.  I won’t go into details but I was raped several times and had to stay the whole night.  He drove me home the next day like nothing was wrong.   Before I got out of the car he warned me not to tell the elders because it was my fault too.  He said that maybe he would call me again.  I muttered something.  All I wanted to do was to get OUT.

I remember sitting in a hot, hot tub and wondering what the heck I was going to do now.  I had committed fornication and I was in BIG big trouble.  I was so confused and scared.  I struggled for about a week or two and decided to go to the elders.  I went and asked to speak to one of the elders who was younger than the rest.  He decided to call in another elder and hear my confession. We met again after that as well with two more - a total of four.  I had to go over details several times.  I’m sure that they couldn’t hardly hear me at times.  They knew who he was.  Other girls had been in the same situation as me.  It was decided that because he wasn’t baptized that there wasn’t really anything they could do to him.  He had been warned before and now they were going to announce that he was bad association.  I on the other hand was baptized, so they had to punish me.  I was put on private reproof - no association, no commenting at meetings, and no field service.  I went home and decided that I was definitely  a bad person.  I don’t know how much longer after my punishment that I decided that I would kill myself.  I turned on the gas stove and sat down on the floor.  This was it, I wasn’t going to let anyone down anymore.

The phone rang.

It was a cousin of one of my JW friends.  He wanted to know how I was and how come I sounded depressed.  I told him that I was just having a really bad day. 

While we talked, I turned off the stove and opened a window.  I decided that maybe this guy was someone worth living for.  We went out for a few months.  I ended up living with him for a year.  I will always have a special place for him in my heart, he saved my life.  And yes I do remember his name.   :-}

I started drinking heavily and using mild drugs.

He was offered a job in Toronto,Ontario working on road construction.  He wanted me to join him there.  So I spent my last dime on a plane ticket and flew out to Toronto.  My mom told me that I was making a big mistake and that I would be back in six months begging them to take me in.  There were many, many times that I had no food or no place to live or just plain hit rock bottom but those words would always ring in my ears.

Things weren't so good when I got to Toronto though.  He worked  really long hours and the only time we really saw each other was on the weekends and we were usually really drunk.  He had a cousin that lived in Toronto that ran with a really bad crowd - the underworld of the city.

I won't go into alot of detail here either except to say that my drug of choice became cocaine and my friends became pimps, prostitutes, and drug dealers.  I slept all day and partied all night.  My boyfriend lived in Toronto for about a year and then wanted to move back to his family and his dogs.  I didn't want to go.   So I stayed.

But I had made a couple of 'good' friends.  One person in particular, he had been very important in the underworld of Toronto and he made it his mission to keep me off the streets.  He would warn others that they could talk to me if they wanted but they were to refrain from 'running game' on me or they would have to deal with him.  Of course, with all this partying I can't hold normal day job so I resort to other illegal means to pay rent and pay for food.  The are many ways for women to make money other than prostitution and I have probably committed most.  Here too I shall refrain from sharing details.

I returned home for a visit about 3 years or so time and it was then that I was disfellowshipped (dsf'd).  They should up at my mom's house and said that they had heard that I was smoking (cigarettes) and living with someone that I wasn't married to and that we really needed to discuss this.  They had already made up their minds.  They asked me if these things were true and I said yes and they asked if I planned on stopping these things and I said no.  They asked me if I realized that I would be dsf'd and I said yes that's fine.  They informed me that if I was repentant and they were sure that I would be after I realized the magnitude of what just happened, I could appeal.  I did care.  I would be back in Toronto by then anyway.

Awhile after that  met a man who eventually got me hook on crack and almost a year later I was totally at his mercy.  Unlike previous relationships he is not physically abusive - just emotionally.  He also controlled all the money.  And so, that is how I ended up pregnant.  I was almost 3 months before I realized that it's been awhile since I've had my period.  I went to a clinic and had a pregnancy test.  I was really, really scared.  Here I am using $200-300 a day and I'm pregnant.  I sat and thought long and hard.  I knew that I had to make a couple of really big life decisions.  Do I keep the baby or do I have an abortion?  Do I stay were I'm living or do I leave?  Do I stay with the baby's father or do I leave him?

I decided that to have an abortion was just out of the question.  I also decided that to stay with the baby's father would just be the biggest mistake I could possibly make.  He would not leave any money for things to prepare for the baby and there was no way I could quit using.  If I stayed living in the crack house he would know where to find me.

I spent the whole pregancy on my own (and cried constantly) and raised my beautiful daughter on my own until she was a year and a half old.  She's 10 now. 

Every time I look at her I remember how she saved my life.  Truly a gift!!

As I mentioned I raised my daughter by myself for just over a year and it was at that time that I met my husband.  I actually saw him while I was on my way to work one day.  I found him extremely attractive and so I yelled at him through the car window and asked him for his phone number.  We were friends for quite some time before we decided to become serious.  He was from a bad relationship in which he had a son.  And I only wanted a long term commitment and a father for my daughter.  Both children are the same age and, in fact, are only four months apart.  Once things became serious, he never went home and we've been together ever since.

He is truly my soul mate.  He encouraged me to go back to school to learn the in's and out's of these wonderful machines called computers.  This allowed me to get a job making real respectable money.

We have had our ups and downs.  Like me getting pregnant a couple years early and having to put my education on hold.  My second daughter, now 6, is also very beautiful and a true delight to the family.  She has fights of giggles when she's tired and a great hugger. 

Then there was "the" accident.  He was the passenger on his friends motorbike when they hit a car.  He lost the use of his left arm but retained the use of his hand.  It was a very tough time for all of us - even the kids.  And in the background there was the realization that there was something really wrong with how I think and process things in my mind.  I think the stress of the whole situation was what triggered this.  I started by researching adult children of alcoholics (ACOA) and found lots of information.  I then stumbled across the  x-JW sites.  I swear that I spent so much time crying that I'm sure that my family thought I was losing my mind.

The moral of the story is this: Cults and High Control Groups and very dangerous and do serious damage to people. 

People who leave the JW's are strong people, messed up, but strong none-the-less.  We  eventually find our way.

One of my goals or ambitions in my life now  is to never stop my growth and potential.  I am constantly reaching and learning.  I also want to help others to avoid ending up where I did.  I am very lucky but it has taken me almost 11 years to straighten out the mess I ended up in.

I hope that by sharing my experiences it has become evident how dangerous this group truly is.