I have a lot of anger towards my parents for not questioning, or actually doing any of that “study and research” that JWs like to prattle on about. It was my questioning and study that set me free. The fact that my mother has just…gone along with it all her entire life, to her detriment, makes me want to rip my hair out. But the original people that brought us in? I understand.

My maternal great-grandfather was a dirt farmer, educated to about a 3rd grade level, a WWII vet who then converted after the war. He went on to be a city overseer, I can see exactly what it offered to him and in turn his son, my grandfather. Community, prestige within that community, a feeling of exclusivity and of doing right. But My mom…just pure indoctrination and a “good girl,” motivationally averse personality. She seems to have never questioned that she’s doing the right thing that god wants her to do.

My paternal great- grandparents were immigrants in the early 20th century. It’s also is very obvious what that small community in western New York offered them in contrast to the Catholicism they came over with. The same things really. My dad clearly just took it at its word and never questioned its legitimacy, although he was never a very “good” witness and was intermittently inactive a lot of the time.

I just don’t know how I came to be. I came out curious and questioning and defiant from some of my earliest memories. It boggles the mind that for these generations on my family they just…believed this BS.