I’ve never been a Jehovah’s Witness (JW), but I think I can still relate to people that have left that religious group, having been both a Christian (Southern Baptist, specifically) and a Baha’i and rejected both faiths due to personal investigation of their claims and histories.
On YouTube, there are several testimonies by people that have left the JWs.
Note that some of them later promoted orthodox Christianity. Would they look at their new religion as critically as their former one? I doubt it. Just because you are AGAINST something false does not mean you are for objective truth. You may merely trade one set of falsehoods for another because it is more acceptable to a larger community. See my previous blog entry, where I noted that the difference between a cult and a world religion is popularity and not substance.
In later blog entries I will look up testimonies by ex-Mormons, ex-Baha’is, ex-Muslims, ex-Christians, and others. For now, enjoy these stories.
Dale Husband's Intellectual Rants 
A friend of mine who is an ex-JW and who requested anonymity, just told me this story, which I have edited:
{{{My frustration with [my parents] first began at 11 years old when one was getting clean from drugs and the other one suddenly decides that’s the perfect time to have another kid that neither of them have time to take care of.
I’m prepped, from when one finds out that they’re expecting, to take care of this baby.
Oh, and the other has a relapse, because a new baby less than a year after getting clean is too much stress.
So this kid is born and after the six weeks of maternity leave, I am stuck with it all night. I already hated school because my home was dysfunctional and it’s too hard to focus on homework when you’re too busy worrying about whether you’re going to be hit in a drug rage after school or if the other one is going to scream at you or hit you because of their general life frustrations.
So, I have to share a room with this baby for the next two years. Kid goes everywhere with me, I am never alone. These three years are when JWs get super active into convincing one of my inactive parents that I need to be active. I see it as a way to get out of my house and keep one parent from screaming at me for everything, so I do it. During this time, I am also pulled out of public school and told the reason why is because I’m a failure who’s going to flunk all my classes. Not one apology is issued for making me lose sleep (which affected my school performance, which was already bad, because I was too traumatized to deal with learning AND my household) by rooming me with the baby.
I think deep down that the JWs are full of nonsense, but get baptized anyway. I will not lie, there are several nice JWs who not only give me jobs, but allow me to tote my youngest sibling along when I need to and give me a safe place to exist away from my own home. At this time, I currently run my household, because those two [parents of mine] work and don’t really want to do anything but that.
So, I get older and one parent’s way of saving their sanity is to work on the road and send money back to the other parent. So the other parent’s mother (who is authoritarian) tried to step in and micromanage me, because apparently everyone in my house lived in such fear of my vagina that they all spent unnatural amounts of time thinking of ways to keep any visitors out of it.
I quickly figure out that this is weird and vow to myself that I will find a way out of my house when it is legal to do so. I take nursing assistant training, even though I hate it, because I know hours will be plentiful enough for me to pay bills if I live simply. I try to plan quietly.
One day, at 17, I find out that my family, who at the time makes over 100k a year, is being evicted from our home because the parent that was home all the time somehow never had enough money to pay the $460 a month rent. I lose my mind. This parent informs me I’ll be moving in with the grandparent that’s obsessed with my vagina and I lose my mind even more.
The Nebraska social services system does nothing to help me, even though I am graduated from high school at the time with a very well paying job and really all I want is to be on my own away from them. I end up in a psych ward a week after having my gallbladder removed (yes, you read that right, I was under so much stress that I had a gallbladder full of stones at 17), because that’s just what we do to frustrated teenagers who lose it on their idiot parents for being idiots, I guess. I get out and I stay with friends randomly, refusing to go back to the home I managed to help the parents find so they wouldn’t have to sleep on my grandparents’ floor.
After 3-4 months of this, I took one parent along with me to tour an apartment in Omaha and illegally signed a lease with a very sympathetic land lady who could probably tell how badly I needed out of there. As soon as I could manage it, I then moved to Iowa after turning 18, because I was a legal adult there and wouldn’t be in Nebraska until I was 19.
I have moved back in with parents a few times, but never before I was no longer a minor. TL;DR: my parents are grossly incompetent and there’s a reason I moved out at 17.}}}
This has become one of my recent goals. i was raised as a witness and although i left 5 years ago, am still dealing with a lot of the damage that was done. Thanks for helping shed light on this. -F&S
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