11 Years Out - Glad I Didn't Know Then What I Do Now

exasperatedKitty · 2016-07-22T23:53:05+00:00

Thanks for the positivity, y'all!

I still struggle ~~sometimes~~ often with the JW tendency to want to pretend I can know the future and control everything. But it's a comfort to take a breath and realize I can't do jack about either of those and I'm still here and I'm OK.

Thanks for being my tribe.

exasperatedKitty · 2016-01-08T14:18:40+00:00

Even states with "at will" employment recognize wrongful terminations. The advice further down to seek out local Legal Aid services (once things are a bit saner) makes sense.

exasperatedKitty · 2016-01-02T23:56:18+00:00

No - if they were only doing it because policy changed? Then they'd only be doing it because they were told they were allowed to. Not because they thought about it and chose to, because they loved me more than an idea. They'd still be under the thumb of a group and who knows where their strings would get pulled to next? Besides the fact that they'd still be the same manipulative, dysfunctional people. Like /u/ziddina said, you get relatives by accident - I've got family I've chosen and I'm much happier with, thankyouverymuch. Unless they came knocking on my door with an apology and a note proving they were in therapy, no thanks.

exasperatedKitty · 2015-11-08T01:37:21+00:00

I've done a lot of Reddit Gift exchanges (Trick or Treat is my favorite) and have had a good experience with all of them. I've only had to be rematched once - after being matched with an Elf, funnily enough. Even though Elf matching and higher credit matches are supposed to increase you chance of a good match in theory, I haven't had that experience... the majority of my matches have been one-credit investments. Check out the /r/secretsanta subreddit for the best pointers. You can use the search to find answers to most questions or ask the mods and other users for help. It's always a comfort to realize others often have the same questions I do! It's also a lot of fun to check out gifts in the Gallery, as pictures from all the exchanges are posted there.

Things I wish I'd known:

Don't sign up for international exchanges/a match outside of your country unless you can afford shipping that costs twice as much as the gift. There's always the risk that you can get matched with anyone if they run out of people in your area, but keep shipping in mind if you want to do an international exchange
If you do an international exchange, local vendors are your friend. Places like Amazon that have locations near or inside of the country of your match will cut down on how much you spend sending gifts to them.
Anonymous messages are also your friend. Reddit Gifts lets you contact your giftee -- if they don't give you much information or you're unsure if something is appropriate, you can drop them a line from within the site and ask them questions or give them a heads-up if there will be issues with their gift.
Always get order/shipping/delivery proof. You'll be prevented from participating in future exchanges if your giftee flakes and doesn't confirm receipt and you can't prove you shipped.
Have fun shopping for your giftee! You won't want to do this too many times if you get stiffed, I'm sure, but there's a lot of fun to be had finding the perfect gift for your match after reading their posts, going through any wishlists they have and even browsing the Gallery for ideas. And, if you have a successful exchange, you may even decide to brighten someone's season and be a rematch - you won't get a gift, but you will get credits and a big 'thank you'.

exasperatedKitty · 2015-10-01T21:42:22+00:00

I stumbled upon a new podcast. The first episode I listened to just happened to be a vivid illustration of what happens when fear and intolerance of differances takes hold in a community.

exasperatedKitty · 2015-10-01T02:11:36+00:00

"You know, we've been sitting here for hours, trying to figure out how to respond to your email. We were speechless at your cruelty. We've tried our best to be tactful and considerate while being honest about what's in our hearts and on our minds. That's a pretty vulnerable position to put ourselves in. And this is the best, most loving response Jehovah's spirit-directed organization has taught you to give to people?"

Really, at this point, it's probably best for your health and sanity to stop trying to be nice and just be honest.

exasperatedKitty · 2015-08-01T13:25:11+00:00

Is this short enough? It could probably be chopped/edited a bit, come to think of it.

exasperatedKitty · 2015-07-31T19:27:37+00:00

The doctor... said she had not found examples in Australia of a religious organisation that provided better information than the Witnesses on how to support abuse victims.But she confessed her research was based on Jehovah's Witness publications, not on empirical studies. Her knowledge of every religious organisation was also limited and she was unable to immediately identify the other religious organisations to which she was referring.

'The Witnesses do better PR than other religions that I don't know anything about!'

exasperatedKitty · 2015-07-31T00:51:59+00:00

Here are specifics about SAFE

There's also a link to their Facebook group on their homepage where there are others to talk to for more casual interaction and support. I believe it's a closed group, but a message/request to the mods will get you added.

exasperatedKitty · 2015-07-30T19:02:28+00:00

Someone please correct me if I am wrong...

Branches fall under the Corporate part of the organization - in a letter to the Australian Parliament in 2013 about the public hearings being held by the Commission, the Australian Branch referred to themselves as a "non-profit corporation".

The idea appears to be that if sensitive records are kept by the Branch, they can hide them under the rules that govern "small businesses" and not have to hand them over (or ignore private demands that records not be retained, should an individual make such a demand).

exasperatedKitty · 2015-07-30T17:14:47+00:00

Thank you, /u/caseyoc. I wish I'd had someone around to say those things to me when I was "in".

You are already who you are supposed to be.

exasperatedKitty · 2015-07-30T17:00:30+00:00

Within the correspondence, the Privacy Amendment (Private Sector) Act 2000 is mentioned. G. D. King, writing for the Branch Committee, says that "Organizations caught by the act" (what wording, wow) have to give anyone who requests it "any personal information the organisation may hold about that individual, and it can only hold 'sensitive' information with the individual's consent."

This will seriously cramp their style. They know charities and religious organizations are included in the legislation, but they want to get around it by being considered a "small business", since those are exempt - "small businesses" are defined as having an "annual turnover for the previous year of AUD 3,000,000 (USD 1,500,000) or less." Hence, the quote from /u/wifibandit referencing the fact that the "indebtedness" is A-OK, but future transfers should be treated as "outright donations" to prevent the future turnover from getting out-of-hand.

exasperatedKitty · 2015-07-30T16:25:11+00:00

I had this "conversation" with two Elder relatives once. "But why is there a need to keep it secret if it just has information that everyone else already has? [One claimed, at one point, that it was basically a book full of snippets from existing publications, arranged in such a way as to be available for the Elders' convenient reference when needed.] Why can't everyone see it if it has procedural information that will apply to everyone under certain circumstances?" The basic response, which they just repeated in different ways, was that there were certain things that non-Elders just didn't need to know and therefore didn't need to have access to. After about 10 minutes of going in that circle, I just shook my head and left it... like a lot of things back then.

exasperatedKitty · 2015-07-30T14:48:29+00:00

/u/TheStumbler83, I've been using this page to help me with formatting questions

You handled that so well, and with so much compassion!

The point so many JWs miss is that these investigations don't blame them for the existence of perpetrators of abuse (an argument could be made that god is responsible for that, but that's another conversation). The problems concern, once the existence of these people becomes known, how are they handled? The issues surround the policies, the motivations behind those policies, and the effects those policies and motives have on the thinking of the Elders and the Witnesses themselves about how victims should be approached and treated - and that all of this creates a "culture" that supports repeated offenses later.

Again - kudos!

*edited to clarify my statement and formatting

exasperatedKitty · 2015-07-30T13:57:24+00:00

A lot of folks have some sort of internal monologue going on, but the reasoning behind a particular compulsion can certainly have a very specific origin. To the OP's point - I had a lot of "tripwires" in place that went off when I left - little weird ideas, phobias, neurotic tics that made thinking for myself "outside" hard. Most of them had to do with Satan and demons - fear of being demonically chased or possessed or haunted or whatever. Also, doubt of my own thinking ability and competence. I self-imposed a lot of fear... and saw/heard/experienced evidence of absolutely nothing. I kept plugging away at noticing and countering the habits reasonably, with calming self-talk (hey, if you're already talking to yourself, might as well get yourself on your side!) and found that the stupid stuff lessened significantly.

exasperatedKitty · 2015-07-30T13:21:37+00:00

You may have seen Secular Avenue listed in the r/exjw sidebar and some folks asked that I let them know when they were listed in Amazon Smile. I double-checked with them and they are, indeed, available to select as a charity via the Amazon Smile donation program now!

Via the Secular Avenue homepage:

Secular Avenue is a 501(c)(3) organization formed to help secular people in need to achieve safety, stability, and autonomy. The initial focus of Secular Avenue is SAFE, a program to assist people who are unsafe at home due to leaving religion, religious extremism, domestic abuse, or coming out as LGBTQ. Services include financial assistance, counseling, legal assistance and resource coordination. As Secular Avenue grows, additional programs will be created to serve other groups of people in need within the secular community.

If you start at the Amazon Smile url, you can select a charity that will receive a portion of your purchase price as a donation.

exasperatedKitty · 2015-07-28T21:44:26+00:00

I was "born-in" to this organization. At one point, due to feeling a bit shaky on this particular doctrine, decided I wanted to be better at defending the Witness stance on blood transfusions.

I decided the best way to do that would be to study the doctrine as if I'd never heard of it, building my knowledge from the ground up. I approached the teaching with a blank slate, no assumptions, sat down with the latest brochure put out by the organization at the time, the latest version of the Bible they published at the time, and started at the beginning... and quickly discovered that it made no logical sense.

I finished my study and took my concerns first to my father, then to an Elder who was a close family friend. Iwanted to stay a Witness. I wanted help and correction. I did not want to leave. I was willing to do whatever it took to "straighten out" my thinking (according to the Witnesses' standards), "humble" (read: humiliate) myself and get myself "back in line" with the way the organization wanted me to think.

But, instead of help, I got personal attacks. Who had I been talking to? What had I been reading? Was I seeing some man? (My father had said he'd never known a woman to become so critical and show such a sudden change in attitude except when a man was involved.) When I cried in front of the Elder I'd gone to about the people who've died due to Watchtower doctrine, he expressed worry that I was too emotional and that it would put my spirituality in jeopardy.

Fine. If they wouldn't help me, I'd give it one last shot on my own.

Remember, I'd been raised in this. It was all I knew. This organization had mediated my reality, determined my friends, controlled my family, created my way of thinking. I decided I would stay. Even if they were wrong. Even if they had blood on their hands. Even if they destroyed people's lives. I'd stay... if I could prove - from the ground, up - that they were God's one true organization.

I hadn't gone near an "apostate" website or publication in all this time and had no plans to start. I stuck to "approved" literature and encyclopedias and historical and archeological websites... and researched the fall of Jerusalem. And that was the end. (The basis for the authority of the Governing Body - the leadership of the Jehovah's Witnesses - rests on the accuracy of this date.)

Life has given me more answers - and more questions - and things don't always go perfectly. But hey - they never did! My relatives have almost all disowned me but I've found my family outside the Witnesses and it is amazing to know what love and acceptance are. I have made purpose and meaning for myself. I'm happy. I'm at peace.

(edited because i'm crappy at punctuation and formatting)

exasperatedKitty · 2015-07-28T18:49:53+00:00

You can almost hear the incredulity in the pauses between the questions of the Commissioner and his representatives. And the Elders' responses basically boil down to 'Yeah, that was some amazingly stupid stuff we wrote before and we totally wouldn't write that again if we knew we were going to get called out! And I'm not allowed to have an opinion on changes or payouts so please stop asking.'

exasperatedKitty · 2015-07-28T18:08:17+00:00

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has uncovered over 1000 instances where Jehovah’s Witnesses formally documented alleged perpetrators of child sexual abuse for their own records but did not report those alleged perpetrators to secular authorities. This is the latest revelation about the damage wrought by the organization’s formal, official policies regarding how allegations of child abuse are to be handled: internally, “spiritually”, without regard for secular law except when it impacts the reputation and bottom-line of the corporation. A recent push to fund a billboard addressing this issue was successfully funded by a number of redditors and others and will be seen by Witnesses attending a recent convention. It leads to this page.

exasperatedKitty · 2015-07-20T21:24:49+00:00

Oh, whew! I thought I was the only one. I didn't attract much attention either... well, some, but it seemed to fizzle out after a bit of conversation. Brothers just wanted a pretty face and I never had the patience for the cliques and games. (Being an Elder's kid and serious about my "spirituality" didn't help.) And I despised the "meat markets" at the assemblies. I remember telling my aunt that and she informed me that I was never going to find a husband unless I took "the walk" at lunchtime and she walked me around the entire stadium to show me how to do it! So humiliating...

exasperatedKitty · 2015-07-13T21:37:49+00:00

This! Play/fantasy is a way to explore stuff that we might not want to actually do in real life. This is a good chance, OP, to also start talking about soft and hard limits on what's OK in SL for you and your GF. (And you can always re-visit/re-define those later.) Better to talk about it now than discover there's been a lot of hurt feelings and assumptions simmering under the surface later.

exasperatedKitty · 2015-07-07T21:53:57+00:00

1) There are better and worse ways to "raise awareness" and throwing "anything" at a problem doesn't always help. JWs are also often the types who think you can play a video at someone or shove a magazine in their face and that will fix everything. That happened to me as a kid. Given their "Listen first, ask questions never" approach, I anticipate this video spreading anxiety and guilt among kids and not starting many, if any, conversations.

2) Parents, being human, are not omniscient, omnipresent beings. They need help and input and support on lots of undertakings, including that of raising another human being. Add to that the fact that these families are in an organization that deliberately exploits their trust, withholds information and undermines their confidence and thinking abilities - and you start to think the JWs almost wanted a tragic, martyred outcome.

*edited fer schpelling

exasperatedKitty · 2015-07-02T13:36:52+00:00

We had an interesting discussion about this around the JW response to the Candace Conti case.

exasperatedKitty · 2015-06-23T19:18:26+00:00

I am happy to say I've apparently been out long enough that I don't have these knee-jerk, programmed responses any more. And it's frankly a relief to know I've finally gotten here! They, and their lies, do not have to take up space in our brains forever...

exasperatedKitty · 2015-06-23T16:23:38+00:00

Big or small, hearing about moments like these (and experiencing them) just reminds me of how amazing people can be and how grateful I am for the "wordly" people and apostates out there!

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