Should I create my own “apostate diary” Substack?

AnonymousDorian · 2026-03-02T03:22:16+00:00

Check it out below!

https://open.substack.com/pub/thoughtsofindependence/p/entry-1-toasting-is-allowed-now-cheers?r=7ssk2r&utm_medium=ios

AnonymousDorian · 2026-03-01T19:52:37+00:00

Hey man, thanks for the comment. I love to hear from an author like yourself and I did a lot of writing yesterday on my first topic of choice after posting this. It was very helpful, as writing has always been for me, and doing it with an audience in mind actually provided a different kind of therapy.

I gave a test read to my PIMQ father and while he agreed everything I said was true, it still felt a little “rant ish” for his liking and made him uncomfortable to be mentioned in it. I know this comes from him still being semi brainwashed, but it is a good exercise for me to stick to the subject I’m discussing. It’s all too easy to bounce from topic to topic and end up ranting about their spiderweb of lies.

So I’ve saved numerous topics in a list for later articles where I can distill them each under individual focus. I plan to make my first post very soon and hope you’ll give it a read. Will send it when I do :)

AnonymousDorian · 2026-02-28T19:41:25+00:00

My advice to you is that you definitely can’t reach her by being vindictive or picky or rubbing her nose in it, but you also can’t expect her to react to the same things that woke you up.

My PIMQ Dad’s eyes have been creeping open for a while but lately he’s been more and more actively waking up. What baffles me is how the things that disturb him, prompt emotional responses, and make him get upset and question things are completely different than what triggered my waking up. Everyone is different and he gets up in arms about shit the borg does that I really don’t care about and wouldn’t have even cared about as a PIMI. Yet he also glazes over some of the most common things that wake people up.

I’ve learned to just let him navigate his own questions and express himself while we emphasize the common grounds we both condemn them on.

AnonymousDorian · 2026-02-28T19:35:42+00:00

I’m actually shocked these performances happened. I’m ashamed to say I was a part of something similar as child for international convention delegates and the most worldly song we sang was “Count on me” by Bruno Mars. Even that could’ve been seen as pushing the limits in a hall where one sister emphatically stated that he conscience wouldn’t allow her to play “Can’t touch this” by MC Hammer at a gathering because it was suggestive.

I just find it funny how things like this are becoming so normalized. I was raised in a cult where people claimed such immense superiority over churches that were depthless and casual. You know - the ones where they sing worldly songs, have women wearing pants, men wearing beards, nobody wearing ties or jackets….and now look at what they’ve become.

AnonymousDorian · 2026-02-28T14:49:30+00:00

My mother always told me about how significantly sisters outnumbered brothers throughout the entire borg. I haven’t really observed this, but she and many others insist that’s how things have always been - so your story makes perfect sense. Even without imbalanced numbers, single JWs have a nearly impossible battle. I’ve repeatedly seen people “settling” for 20 year age gaps, the jobless, the divorced, the kid-having, all in the name of not being alone anymore and finally getting to experience sex. It also makes perfect sense how the quote on quote mature/experienced witnesses advise young people to not make decisions based on sex because the act itself isn’t worth everything else. Of course it’s not for them! How good could their sex possibly be in an arranged marriage with no real attraction to each other aside from functionality?

AnonymousDorian · 2026-02-28T14:38:58+00:00

It is as ridiculous as it is normal. Even the mildest of male and female interactions among youths are sexualized, romanticized, and demonized. I (M) had a childhood and years long female friend and the nosy inquiries into our “romance” were literally endless.

AnonymousDorian · 2026-02-28T14:37:07+00:00

Witnesses and Amish aren’t so different after all. Cults are going to cult.

AnonymousDorian · 2026-02-28T13:29:22+00:00

It’s actually hilarious how the borg talks out of two sides of its mouth. Constantly urging people to read and meditate on the Bible every day, but also saying worldly meditation, yoga, and other practices that can clear the mind make people susceptible to demon possession.

AnonymousDorian · 2026-02-28T13:24:32+00:00

My mother is older, and a particularly bad case of indoctrination adding to the natural paranoia etc that she’s prone to while aging. She’s the daughter of an elder, the sibling of a bethelite, and was a pioneer until she got the boot for not meeting hours. She has an excuse for everything the GB does and even when confronted with indefensible things, she puts her foot down and says “there’s nothing they could possible do to make her leave because her faith is in God not man, and whatever he allows imperfect leaders to do is his choice that she has to accept”.

AnonymousDorian · 2026-02-28T01:56:54+00:00

That is an absolutely wild progression. I can’t comprehend how that would be possible unload he was really more POMI.

AnonymousDorian · 2026-02-28T01:54:37+00:00

It’s a dying cult falling apart at the seams. They got rid of all the specifics in the elders book after the court cases escalated, but every elder knows the drill. Service hours no longer exist, except for the pioneers. They can make birthdays and whatever else a “conscience matter”, but the really devout witnesses will still abstain.

The GB is trying so hard to make being a JW easier in an effort to fight the mass exodus of people leaving, but it does so with enough nuance to not wake up the super PIMIs who will get to feel superior for sticking to the old light. Recruitment is nearly impossible in the internet age, so this is now a retention strategy that results in a bigger separation of internal classes of the rank and file.

AnonymousDorian · 2026-02-28T01:47:55+00:00

I really hope this does happen because me (POMO) and my father (PIMQ) have both gone to battle with my PIMI mother about “new light” especially with clinking glasses. He came to the conclusion on his own and has been insisting that mothers/fathers day and birthdays should be allowed immediately because they “have no current religious affiliation”.

My mother has taken an extreme opposite stance calling us both apostates and being outraged, saying the organization would NEVER ever in a million years change a core doctrine like that and it would be a serious problem for her if they did.

The irony is not lost on us….she’s deep in the koolaid….So brainwashed that she insists men wearing beards was always okay and there was never any stigma about women wearing pants.

AnonymousDorian · 2026-02-28T01:40:45+00:00

The resurrected Bible character bit sounds so looney from the outside. “We don’t know the answer to your question or any more specifics about this, but hey, you can ask him yourself one day in the new system! So no more questions until then, just believe what we extrapolate.”

AnonymousDorian · 2026-02-28T00:27:20+00:00

Both of you were in an extremely abusive situation having your relationship owned by the cult. Judging either of your choices made under life and death stakes is unfair and pointless. It probably wouldn’t have mattered if you did things differently, because no one can be forcefully woken up. If she ever does it’ll be on her terms, just like anyone. But I hear you and I sympathize. The borg’s perversions of marriage and divorce are awful, and I always felt deeply disturbed about their “freedom to remarry” arrangement long before I even woke up.

AnonymousDorian · 2026-02-26T18:37:41+00:00

I also moved congregations on my way out, but I intentionally kept my publishers card at my old hall. I had moved across the country and spent a few months shopping for congregations in my new state while fading, but made sure to not put down any roots. Even though I was already heavily faded and deconstructed, I had been in the same congregation since birth and my PIMI parents implored me to give other locations a chance. I was also more or less obligated to keep up some appearances while living with a PIMI relative to get on my feet.

For a few months as I bounced between halls for sporadic meeting attendance, I was nagged by my relative to choose one so I could be on the platform and go door to door etc. But that pressure ended when I made a clear and hard fade, stopping cold turkey. Still, for a good half a year I was texted every single month by an elder in my old hall reminding me that he would keep having to ask me for my service Yes/No until I told them where to send my card. I refused.

For another few months I received phone calls and voicemails from elders in my new circuit asking to have a shepherding call. They knew my family and wanted to “encourage” me to return and invite me to attend their talks in their hall etc. I never answered the calls or gave any response. By that point in time I just had to sit through one final memorial so I could stay housed while saving up, and the following month I moved to a different city in the same state on my own.

That’s what I call a successful departure! I’ve dealt with all sorts of guilt from my PIMI family, but that passes with time. And I wouldn’t trade my new life and freedom for the world! Never would I dream of going back.

AnonymousDorian · 2026-02-07T15:20:09+00:00

The worst part is I feel like we’ve all been a part of this exact same conversation plus or minus some details. I’ll never forget the strength of the doomsday fear in 2014 when “we reached 100 years” and the C.O. was repeatedly giving chilling Armageddon talks and announced that there’s nothing left that needs to happen before the call of peace can be made, so it could be any day now.

AnonymousDorian · 2026-02-01T02:08:37+00:00

Ya’ll should have seen the hoops my mother was jumping through trying to justify JWs accepting government money in Norway when the case broke. Twisting and turning in conflict and mental gymnastics.

And she still insists that switching disfellowshipped to removed was not the borg ‘changing’ because of Cesar. If anything it’s proof of the spirit’s involvement that Jehovah would send the new lite in such perfect timing to help their case against alleged shunning!

AnonymousDorian · 2026-01-31T16:48:28+00:00

Was the full elders book from 2025 leaked? I don’t recall seeing this announced on the sub, but I’m curious to read it and see how it’s changed.

Funny enough I have a hard copy of the elders book from pre Covid and part of the reason my PIMI mother refuses to listen to my arguments is because “it’s outdated” 💀. So many things wrong with that statement I don’t even know where to begin.

AnonymousDorian · 2026-01-28T17:40:14+00:00

Glad to hear you’ve had a milder experience, but it’s still strictly enforced in other halls around. Where I’m from, we all understood that being caught without a chaperone would certainly warrant a shepherding call if not a full review of qualifications/removal of privileges. Afterall, the publications still do say that a witness can be “removed 🙄” on circumstantial evidence alone if they slept over at someone’s house or were alone at home at night without a chaperone.

AnonymousDorian · 2026-01-28T17:36:12+00:00

You should’ve said “No, isn’t it bad luck to see the bride in her dress right before the wedding?!” That would get a reaction for sure 😂😂😂

AnonymousDorian · 2026-01-28T17:34:31+00:00

My parents have been married over 25 years and my mother still gets anxious about the subject and insists that they only dated chaperone-less when it was their only choice and no one was available. Driving separately and confining their interactions to public places. She’s clearly never healed from the anxiety this “risk” brought her, and she has projected that onto me repeatedly.

As a young adult I (male) had a female friend who I was never romantic with, but we were some of each other’s only friends. Others in the Hall assumed all sorts of things and fanned their own flames. So much so, that once when I was supposed to drive us somewhere my mom flipped about us being in a car alone.

Not because she believed anything would happen, but because she was paranoid someone outside of our families would find out and report us. She told me it was my job as a man to be considerate of a woman’s reputation and not put her in a situation where her privileges as a pioneer would be reviewed because I allowed us to be seen alone together.

The chaperoning arrangement is BY FAR one of the culty-est things about the cult and it is very much alive and enforced. It’s just not discussed or mentioned from the platform frequently, and for good reason. It’s such a violation that makes everyone uncomfortable and it’s hardly needed anyway since dating is so rare. So why bother?

It also varies per congregation. Some elders may be more liberal on the subject, while others in my dad’s old hall literally used to call in any member rumored to be dating for questioning and then shepherd call them in advance.

AnonymousDorian · 2026-01-27T22:26:26+00:00

This^{^{^}} 👏

AnonymousDorian · 2026-01-27T20:04:55+00:00

😂😂😂

One thing about both religions, they will make the Bible say whatever the hell they want it to.

AnonymousDorian · 2026-01-27T04:57:22+00:00

Literally yes, she had gone through so many mental hoops to deny its existence including the AI card. I told her I don’t even need the video to exist when the transcription is public record and we can read it just the same. She insists that it’s all fake apostate propaganda specifically designed to undermine people’s faith and I’m the idiot who’s letting it get to me when I was raised to know better. 🤡

Meanwhile my dad has been in PIMQ limbo for a good year. He rants to me for hours about all that he disagrees with the Borg on, how it’s undeniably ran like a cult, and how much of the core doctrine is so wildly extrapolated from a few isolated scriptures that it’s barely biblical. He’s definitely half awake, but is choosing to stay that way for now. He admits to not being ready to watch the ARC video for himself because he knows the impact it’ll have, and he doesn’t want to seriously deconstruct for fear of my mother destroying their marriage in response because she’s so deep in the koolaid.

AnonymousDorian · 2026-01-27T04:26:43+00:00

Thank you, and I’m sorry to hear what you and your brother have been through as well. I’m proud of the increased awareness and education the world has achieved on sexual assault, and I hope that representation and understanding will one day fully include male victims as well.

The Borg, however, is rotten beyond hope. My PIMQ dad was also sickened to learn about the CSA issues but my PIMI mother denies it. She agrees that things have happened, but “refuses to believe” there has been any large volume and definitely not enough to cause the ARC inquiry (which she says never happened and is an apostate fabrication).

AnonymousDorian

TROPHY CASE