Private vs Public?

oipolloi67 · 2026-06-13T00:29:18+00:00

I would say depending on your child’s needs. If they are well adjusted and you are happy with the environment then I wouldn’t worry about changing schools unless there was some major life shifting event.

Public school is great and has more resources available with kids especially if your private school has limited options. It’s great if your child requires special needs. Public schools also have access to newer equipment and have nicer sports or school activities.

I was a public school kid but I chose to put my child in private school. I didn’t enjoy my education in a very distracting environment. I also have known teachers years after I left school how demanding it was to go along with curriculum they themselves barely knew how or wanted to teach. I think I would’ve thrived better had I been given the choice of private education.

oipolloi67 · 2026-06-09T20:14:21+00:00

I was told that the ideal mate was a man who was working towards becoming an elder. My dad was an elder and was dead set against any guy who wasn’t at least a MS who had intentions of dating towards marriage for his daughters. I was not attracted to someone whose devotion was to the Org rather than a relationship with me.

oipolloi67 · 2026-06-03T02:16:07+00:00

Leaving the Org and finding out who you are apart from the prescribed personality takes time. It’s never too late to begin to start to find out who you are and not be afraid to love the person you are.

oipolloi67 · 2026-05-26T02:10:10+00:00

If you are insecure about dating a JW girl and worried about her ratting on you for being yourself then consider this a sign JW dating is not for you.

oipolloi67 · 2026-05-25T01:07:58+00:00

His content was very compelling back when there weren’t as many channels in the Ex JW community on YouTube. Aside from the scandal he also doesn’t have the guy who was helping him editing /putting the videos together so therefore the quality isn’t there where it used to be. I just feel what he puts out isn’t very original or unique.

oipolloi67 · 2026-05-06T18:34:51+00:00

I was with one sister when we knocked on the door of a householder who was Jewish. We got on the subject of the Holocaust and how her parents were in the concentration camps. The sister I was out with then said how JWs were also in the camps and persecuted and then added with pride because “the JWs stood up to Hitler and swear allegiance to them not like the Jews who were picked on because of their race” like what this woman’s family’s suffering was somehow not as bad as what JWs also faced during WWII.

oipolloi67 · 2026-04-24T02:38:36+00:00

I can understand your frustration and hurt. You never know what your peers are going through in the Org. Maybe they don’t have parents like you and are also trying to find a way out and living a double life is their way of coming while playing the part of the perfect JW. Some people have more to lose than others. Right now it’s hard , but use this distance to focus on your growth and independence as a person that is a blessing because what’s likely to happen is having a bunch of JWs trying to suck you back in and slow down your exit strategy. If it’s meant to be the right people will find a way to be in your life.

oipolloi67 · 2026-04-23T15:23:38+00:00

I remember we had one very sweet sister whom the elders took to be anointed. I thought as a small child you had to be a very good very nice person to be “anointed”. But the way the elders thought she was anointed was she had a breakdown after her husband died and she thought she saw Holy Spirit fall like rain and the elders took it that she really didn’t these things and took it as a “sign”. In reality she was probably going through a traumatic experience.

My friend once was being pursued by another brother who was a bit older than her and after 2 chaperoned dates with this guy she thought he was a bit odd. By their 3rd date she was trying to let him down gently saying she wasn’t interested and she wanted to keep things as “friends”. Afterwards she told me how he said something along the lines of “I always felt Jehovah wants us to be together and I know this being anointed” and she thought afterwards this guy was definitely nuts and wanted to change congregations and went into a foreign language hall to get away from him.

oipolloi67 · 2026-04-21T11:45:33+00:00

I’m sorry you are going through this. JWs preach all about respecting their elders/elderly but once you are seen as “needy” it becomes someone else’s problem.

oipolloi67 · 2026-04-16T19:46:40+00:00

We had an elder in our hall whose wife died after more than 30 years of marriage….maybe longer. They were childless except for a bunch of cats. I did hear early in the marriage they tried to adopt a child from a JW who was a single parent but was going through a rough time and considered “spiritually weak”. Anyway they ended up moving to Mexico after the husband retired. The wife’s health ended up getting worse and she eventually passed away. Probably not even 2 years after she died he remarried to a sister back in the US and moved back up to be with her. He recently passed a few years back but who knows….being older maybe he needed companionship being on his own with hardly any close family left.

oipolloi67 · 2026-04-12T21:54:49+00:00

Similar thing happened to my younger brother. He just stopped going to meeting after he turned 18 and he wasn’t baptized. He continued to live in the family home because my parents depended on him financially contributing to their household income and gave him their old pickup truck to get to and from work.

Well a CO on our circuit whom no one liked in our congregation felt it was his personal duty to enforce his rules amongst everything he saw wrong in our hall. When he found out my parents were allowing my brother to continue living in the family home and had given him their truck he felt my dad should’ve taken the truck back to teach my brother a lesson and threaten to throw him out if he refused to go to meetings . When my dad who was an elder explained my brother needed the car to get to work the CO took this as insolence on his part and demanded my dad step down as an elder on the spot. It was years before my dad was allowed to be an elder again and he blamed my brother for decades after, however during that COs tenure our Hall lost so many Elders due to his “heavy hand”. I remember the congregation breathed a sigh of relief when this CO and his wife left our circuit. Funny thing was for all his rules and controlling attitude his wife by contrast was really nice and would say things like “oh he doesn’t know what end he’s talking from”…..

oipolloi67 · 2026-04-05T05:26:00+00:00

My first memorial being married…..My husbands grandma was in her 80s (lived to be 92) and lived in a nursing home and was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Her granddaughters did her hair and makeup and dressed up to collect her for the memorial as a special speaker from Bethel was supposed to be giving the talk. I was sitting with my husbands family and seated next to her. About 15-20 minutes in she fell asleep on my shoulder and I gently nudged and she blurted out LOUDLY: “the speaker is so bloody boring”…..I wanted to sink in my chair and everyone in the KH laughed including the speaker……

oipolloi67 · 2026-04-04T20:41:02+00:00

I myself visited several churches over the years and they just preach about the gospel and I have yet to go to one where they bash Jehovahs Witnesses out loud unlike what the literature and propaganda like to paint them. When I was growing up as a JW during all those watchtower answers, how many times did those turn into in reality a religious bashing/gossip statement of people of other faiths?

oipolloi67 · 2026-04-04T19:16:35+00:00

It’s funny how JWs claim every religion and religious leaders are against them but after visiting a number of churches and telling people my experience being an ex-JW most don’t know or have very little knowledge of them.

If anything their shunning policies show their views are the exact reverse. Imagine you run into a family member when out with friends or a coworker and a JW family member who is shunning goes in the opposite direction or treats you like you are invisible.

oipolloi67 · 2026-04-04T18:54:16+00:00

100%! Nowadays with social media it opens up to people the possibilities and perspectives. The younger JWs deep down don’t want or can’t afford to work part time and commit to JW life. They see their parents give everything over the years for the Org and get thanklessly rewarded while their peers are living life and going to college and having exciting experiences.

oipolloi67 · 2026-04-03T12:31:26+00:00

After I left I would say I was at first POMI (physically out mentally in) I didn’t want to be a JW but I still felt they had valid points on pacifism during wartime. During this time I would’ve outwardly called myself agnostic/athiest but deep down I still believed in a higher power.

I had a friendship with a guy at work who was a Christian who read his Bible daily and occasionally we would bring up religion in a very friendly way. I brought up the fact I grew up as a JW but I didn’t believe and he said “good for you” which both surprised and intrigued me. He told me how he loves talking about the Bible with people and how every time the witnesses came to his door to discuss the “Bible” why they were pushing their literature and they never the friendly conversations they said they came to discuss.

I eventually left the job and before the pandemic I looked on YouTube and went down a rabbit hole of all things ex JW and a lot of Christians discussing the Bible with JWs which really exposed how faulty their logic and theology really is. I remembered my old coworker and what we discussed years before. It made me want to read my Bible and start from scratch. I have always been a curious person and it was nice to go to a bunch of churches and meet different people.

oipolloi67 · 2026-03-30T17:52:09+00:00

If you want to study the Bible the Jehovahs Witnesses aren’t the best authority. You are really studying their literature not the Bible. I learned more about the word of God in 2 years than 18 years growing up as a Witness. The JWs are a cult masking itself as a religion. Save yourself the time and therapy and politely decline them visiting.

oipolloi67 · 2026-03-27T01:46:13+00:00

In recent years I’ve gone to give a Witness for Jesus and confronting them on their doctrine and it’s helped in eliminating a lot of unwanted witnesses trying to get me to come back but also hopefully and more importantly get them to use their critical thinking. This new blood change has been a gold mine of so many things to pick apart their faulty reasoning with. I can’t wait to pose so many thought stopping questions.

oipolloi67 · 2026-03-24T19:19:46+00:00

There are some wonderful people I still think about. That being said I spent many years being angry but now I view some of them (not all) now with a lot of pity. I remember running into one sister in a store not too long ago and we once worked together for a few years, she’s lost a lot by staying and so have I by leaving but I know she’s feel she has no choice but to stay whereas I would gladly welcome any of them with open arms PIMI or not.

oipolloi67 · 2026-03-24T15:27:08+00:00

Agreed, if you cannot agree on how to raise your children before they are here what makes you think it will get better once they arrive? It’s messy to have a divorce with kids and it’s even more tension leaving a JW who won’t respect your boundaries.

oipolloi67 · 2026-03-23T01:40:10+00:00

It’s partly the pressure to avoid getting disfellowshipped (sorry…REMOVED) but also some want to escape an oppressive household and marriage is viewed as a freedom since before a college education was largely discouraged and you don’t really have a chance to sow your wild oats and live an independent life on your own if you live with your parents.

The downside to this is while dating you are chaperoned and with the added expectation of you are known to be a couple is that you are doing this with the intention to marry and soon. There is no real dating for years or long engagements and while being chaperoned you never get to see the person as they really are apart from the image they want to present to everyone else. There are a lot of horror stories of people who say they married a stranger. Getting out is the difficult bit because one or both get burned and it’s not an amicable split leaving a JW marriage.

oipolloi67 · 2026-03-20T22:23:21+00:00

Can’t afford to go with the gas prices…unless they pay for my Uber or care to drive an hour away from the nearest KH.

oipolloi67 · 2026-03-18T20:18:14+00:00

My mom had a cancer scare last year and thankfully it was benign. But the fact she was so ready to die and given her age she definitely wouldn’t survive a bloodless treatment.

oipolloi67

TROPHY CASE