My Story... (An X-Jehovah Witness tells all)

[NaddiaAoC]

Thank you for the feedback. I actually have the story completely written, but I'm revising and editing it a bit as I go. I've posted this on an ex JW forum, and I've found that many ex JW's strongly relate to it. Writing this was cathartic for me, but I've been surprised at how well it has resonated with others who have been raised in high control religious groups. We have many shared experiences. Here is the next segment. All feedback is welcome, including any criticisms or grammatical corrections.The Teenage YearsWhen I was 14, I started high school. I was always kind of a loner in school. I tended to be the quiet, reflective type of kid. I carried a serious demeanor and was unusually mature for my age. People always thought I was older than I was. I also loved art. I was always drawing. Like my mom who could spend days isolating herself, immersed in books, I could spend many hours alone drawing and painting. I'm still like that. I just don't have nearly as much free time to do so. I would carry my sketch book and pencils with me wherever I went. At social gatherings, I was the kid in the corner sketching while everyone else was mingling or dancing. I didn't have a bad experience with school like many Witness kids do. I never got picked on by other kids. I never got bullied. I also wasn't popular with the other kids either. I always had a few friends at school, but my friendships were strictly limited to school. I wasn't allowed to see them after school. They were "worldly." I was never allowed any involvement in extracurricular activities. That didn't really bother me though because I had a lot of good JW friends, and I was always doing stuff with them. Even in my JW circle of friends though, I always felt a bit different. I was content, surrounded by people who I thought were good people, and I felt a connection with them through our religious beliefs. However, I often felt bored by the mundane and non-stimulating conversation that took place. I wasn't interested in what scandalous low-cut dress So-And-So wore to the last meeting or how "unspiritual" someone was because they bought a sports car instead of a nice minivan for field service. The excessive gossip annoyed me and to some extent caused me to not trust a lot of the people within my JW social group. I trusted them as friends, but kept them at an emotional distance and didn't get too close to most of them. I learned to be sociable, but to keep to myself.My parents were very sociable. They organized JW gatherings and events all the time. Card parties, family nights with food and games, pool parties, congregation picnics in the park with the band playing music and everyone dancing, square dances, etc... you name it and if it was legal by JW standards, my parents were in the middle of it. We were immersed in the religion both doctrinally and socially. When I was 14, one of my friends at school was a 15 year old boy who was on the football team. He and I had been friends all through grade 8, so going into grade 9 we started hanging out together again while in school. He knew that I was a JW. He knew that I didn't date (courtship should only be pursued for the purpose of marrying that person), or go to dances or football games or pep rallies. He knew that I loved art and that I had a strong personality. We talked a lot and got along well. I didn't "like" him as anything more than a school friend. I never sensed that he was interested in me either, but perhaps I was na

[NaddiaAoC]

During this time, my brother had been given an assignment to serve where the need was greater. A year earlier he had attended Ministerial Training School, a very intense course taught by JW elders that prepares young men to be sent to areas of the country that need ministerial servants and elders to lead their congregations. My how my parents were proud of him! It seems that Bethel wasn't in Jehovah's plan for him. He wanted him serving as a ministerial servant/regular pioneer in a small congregation in rural Illinois. So I went with my husband, parents, sister, and brother-in-law to help him move out there. It was a seven hour drive. We got him settled into his apartment in a quiet little neighborhood near the KH. We spent the night in a motel and then we drove home. On the drive home, my brother-in-law and I started discussing the topic of evolution. I was now convinced that it had a scientific basis and I knew that my family would not agree. My sister and my husband were horrified when I stated that I thought evolution does occur, but to my surprise my brother-in-law seemed intrigued by my comment. When I explained what I meant, he agreed with me. He said that he had minored in biology in college and that he had read Origin of the Species by Charles Darwin. That blew me away. He might as well have told us all that he had read the Satanic Bible. It blew my sister away too. He said that Darwin basically had it right on a microscopic level. The only thing "evolutionists" have wrong is the idea that one species evolves into another because that conflicts with what we know to be Biblically true. I was so impressed that my brother-in-law realized that, and even more impressed that he openly stated it without any concern for what the rest of my family thought. I think they just brushed his liberal views off to the fact that he was from Amsterdam, but they were becoming a bit concerned about mine.I continued to debate various religious, philosophical, scientific, and moral issues on that message board. About six months in, I began to have strong doubts about my faith. I still believed in the JW religion, but I was no longer certain like I always had been before. So I immersed myself into the JW religion, reading through books like the "Creation" book, the "Creator" book, the "Bible-God's Word or Man's?" book, and countless Watchtower articles. I searched their CD for everything I could find on the nature of God, creationism and evolution, the great flood, historical proof for the Bible, and other topics we were discussing. Despite my best efforts to "prove the truth to myself" it didn't work. I felt that my whole perspective was completely biased. I had never studied anything other than this one worldview. How could I know that I have the truth when I don't know the rationales behind other points of view? I became acutely aware of my high level of bias and my lack of education. Thus began a brand new intellectual journey for me.One of the posters on the message board (Chris) mentioned a book he was reading called Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan. He raved about it. I decided to put down my Bible and pick up Sagan. I read it through and fell in love with science. That book enlightened me to a whole new perspective of the world and our place within it. It's all about perspective, and it really helped to change mine, and that was scary as hell. Though I still believed in the Bible and the JW religion, I felt agnosticism setting in. All of my certainty was gone. I felt extremely vulnerable, like I had been taught that I had absolute truth all my life, but I didn't. How could I be so foolish? How could by judgment be this poor? This hard, solid block of certainty had been chafed away into a fine dust that was slipping through my fingers despite my efforts to grasp it. Perhaps I had some version of truth, but it was anything but absolute. Did god exist? I thought he did. He must. And I prayed to him more intensely than I ever had. There had to be a god. I would look at the trees and sky and think, 'There has to be a god. There just has to be.' I'd be at the Kingdom Hall mingling with my JW friends and think, 'This has to be the truth. It just has to be.' But I felt that I was simply trying to convince myself that it was though I was completely unsure. The conflict and confusion tore me up emotionally. I was walking through the grocery store one day and caught a reflection of myself in window and I couldn't stand what I saw. I left the grocery store without buying anything and without really thinking it through, I went to a salon and had my hair cut. I had always worn it long. My straight, thick, dark brown hair hung to the small of my back. I wanted it all off. The woman who was cutting my hair didn't feel comfortable with my request. "That's a very dramatic change," she said. I didn't care. I didn't even know why I wanted it cut, but I felt the need for change. So against her better judgment she cut off 16 inches. My hair was short, shaved up my neck, like a traditional male cut. It was radically different from any look I had ever had, and I loved it. It felt a bit liberating. And I went home and showed my husband. He was completely shocked. I never contemplated cutting it short and he always loved my long hair, so it was quite an adjustment for him. My family was shocked as well, and I think they were becoming increasingly concerned about me. The hair cut wasn't that big of a deal, but it was a drastic and impulsive change. And that was entirely out of character for me. They were concerned about what was going on with me, but I didn't know how to tell them. The lack of certainty I felt opened a huge void, and it was incredibly destabilizing. There were times when I would pray so hard that I would cry and then I would cry so hard I would vomit. I would try to sleep but couldn't. I grew intensely angry inside and found solace in hard rock/metal music. I started reading book after book on science, religion, philosophy, history, and the psychology of belief. I didn't know what I was looking for exactly, but I felt the need for something. My husband noticed changes in me. I dared not tell him all my thoughts, but I would try to discuss some of them with him, feeling him out for acceptance in any area I could find. Any deviation from what he believed was "the truth" was met with attempts to suppress my exploration. When he discovered that I was reading Carl Sagan he flipped out. "Carl Sagan is an evolutionist! How can you read that crap? I don't want that demonic material in my house." I started paying for books with cash instead of the credit card so that he didn't know what I was reading. None of what I was reading was of an "apostate" nature. I hadn't even thought to scrutinize the JW religion itself. I was reading books of a secular nature. When he found out that I was debating these subjects online, he threatened to disconnect the internet. I found it strange that the man who I admired for being more open-minded than my parents no longer appeared to be. I asked him why he would feel the need to control what I was reading and he said, "As the head of this house I have the responsibility to protect your spirituality." That didn't set well with me at all. My spirituality is my business. I knew that it affected him, but my thoughts are my own and nobody is going to control them, not him, not my parents, not anyone.I talked to him less and less about deep issues. Every time I tried to confide in him it ended with him forbidding me from exploring other ideas, so I stopped confiding in him. I also began feeling distant from my family. I continued to spend time with them on a regular basis, but internally felt like I was emotionally detaching from them. I realized that if I was no longer certain about my beliefs then there was a possibility that I could one day leave the religion, and if I did leave the religion I would lose my family. I had never even contemplated that loss before. When I believed in the truth of the religion with certainty, there was no threat of EVER losing my family. Even if one of us died, we still had forever together. But now, now it was different, now I wasn't even sure there would be a "forever." Despite still going to the meetings and spending time with my family, I felt incredibly alone and isolated. I felt like I was falling apart emotionally, but couldn't let anyone know that. I had no friends outside, nobody that I could dare to confide these dark, monstrous thoughts in. More to follow...Cheryl Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too? -Douglas Adams

[NaddiaAoC]

It was around that time that I got pregnant. I was obviously lacking in foresight. All of these changes in my thinking were new to me. I truly believed that despite my doubts, my faith would recover. Even though I knew that losing my family was a possibility now, I didn't think that it would ever become a reality. In an attempt to hold everything together I got pregnant. I miscarried the first time around, which only added to my depression, but the second time around it worked. It was August 2001 when I found out I was pregnant, and on the same day I found out that I was pregnant, my sister announced to the family that she was pregnant. My parents were becoming grandparents for the first time

[Federika22]

Cheryl, I'm still loving your story. I have so much respect for you to be able to share the details of this very personal metamorphosis.

[irishrosem]

Cheryl:I too have enjoyed reading your story, and think you are very brave to share such a personal experience. I find it heartening that it was education that led to you challenging your faith. It was not surprising to see how negatively education is viewed by J.W.s. Indoctrination's key ingredient is, afterall, ignorance. What a curious mind you must have to dig yourself out of that quagmire of ingrained beliefs--as you recounted, you had to question, not just your beliefs, but your own system of reasoning. I look forward to reading the end of your story, though I loathe to see the inevitable separation between you and your family. Thank you for sharing your experience.As a side note, I live right next door to a J.W. congregational hall, Kingdom Hall I think you called it. It's kind of weird to think that all those men and women that pass me on their way to pray are thinking that I'm damned when armageddon comes around. I guess that's no different than how a lot of theists feel, oh well.

[NaddiaAoC]

Irishrosem stated: Quote:Indoctrination's key ingredient is, afterall, ignorance.That's such a true statement.I apologize for taking so long to respond to this. The last couple weeks have been a bit tough for me emotionally. My brother got married this past Saturday and I was, to my surprise, invited to the wedding. I don't want to put the cart before the horse with regards to telling my story so I won't say much here. Suffice it to say, I haven't felt emotionally up to posting about this given the events of the past couple weeks. I do appreciate the feedback though, and I'll continue with the story now.My World CrumblesI was five and a half months pregnant and decided that I didn't want to keep living this facade of a life. I told my husband that I was going to move out onto my own. Our marriage was a joke at that point. We hadn't slept in the same room together for months. We couldn't talk to each other without arguing. He had become so controlling that I felt little freedom in my home. It was "his house" and "his rules" and he was the "head of the house." I was done. I felt completely screwed up in the head and needed to figure myself out before attempting to figure out how to make a marriage work. I had suggested marriage counseling, but he wouldn't even consider it. Jehovah's Witnesses generally discourage seeking professional counseling or therapy. So I packed some clothes and went to stay in a motel. I started looking for my own apartment.While I was out on my own I met a young man who expressed an interest in me sexually. I had never had any sort of sexual relationship with anyone other than my husband. I think that part of it was the curiosity of exploring sexuality with someone I was emotionally unattached to and part of it was a way "out" of the religion, but whatever the reason I had a brief affair with him. It only lasted a couple days and then I never saw the guy or talked to him again. I didn't consider it "cheating," because in my mind my marriage was over. It was only a matter of legally finalizing it. I didn't think that my husband cared about me or wanted to be married to me anymore. He would frequently tell me flat out that he didn't like me and that he couldn't stand to be around me, but the religion condemns divorce except on the grounds of adultery. So I figured that this would give me a way out of the religion and him a way out of the marriage. I told him about the brief affair and told him that I would go to the elders about it so that he could be free to move on. I told my husband what I thought and how I felt about everything

[NaddiaAoC]

I never did talk to my dad or say goodbye to him. I just couldn't do it. I tried. Three times over the week before the announcement was made I started walking down to his house to talk to him, but before I would get to his house I was crying so hard. I just couldn't face him. I'd walk back home. He never came to see me either. I don't know if he was too angry or sad, but we never said our goodbyes and I haven't talked to him since.My disfellowshipping announcement was made in early January, 2002. I did not attend the meeting, but my husband did. He said that it was like a funeral that night. After the meeting, everyone was hugging my parents and my husband. People were crying and offering their sympathies. "You'll be missed," was all he said to me.I drifted into a very deep depression. It's probably the darkest period of my life. I felt little reason to live. I had no friends or family now. I would see my parents coming and going from their home just down the street from me, but they wouldn't even look at me or wave. My husband hated me. I was heartbroken, miserable, and felt little hope for the future. The whole period is just a blur. All I did was sleep. Days and nights ran together. I'd look at the clock not knowing if it was 11am or 11pm. My husband would have to wake me up and remind me to eat. I'd go for days without bathing and not even realize it. I didn't leave the house even once for those first few weeks. Thankfully, I was able to take a leave of absence from work, which lasted for over a month, so I didn't lose my job.I would have taken antidepressants if I could have, but I was pregnant so my doctor would not prescribe them. I thought about suicide daily, multiple times a day for a good year. I had a plan. I knew exactly what I would do to end my life. I had lost everything in my life that was important to me and I felt like the situation was entirely out of my control, and if it hadn't been for the glimmer of hope that was growing inside of me, the baby that I had seen during the ultrasound and that I felt moving around in my belly every day, I think it probable that I would have committed suicide within the weeks that followed my disfellowshipping. And that wouldn't have been too shocking. Quite a few have committed suicide shortly after being disfellowshipped from or leaving the JW religion. The isolation is unbearable. It took time for me to work through everything and I still don't know that I fully have.Three months after I was disfellowshipped my sister gave birth to her daughter. She requested that I not be there. I went to the hospital just to be sure everything was ok. I waited in the hallway. I saw my parents and brother, but they acted as if I wasn't there. When the baby was born they all went in the room to see her child, including my husband, and I went home. Later that night I watched the video that my husband made. There was my whole family gathered around watching the event, but I was not there and was not welcome there. The reality of my situation started to set in. Despite still living in very close proximity to my family, I was completely on my own. Three days later I developed serious complications with my pregnancy. I was only 32 weeks, but I had toxemia and my liver and kidneys weren't functioning properly. I had three times the amount of amniotic fluid that I was supposed to have. My obstetrician did a nonstress test and the test showed that the baby had a sustained elevated heart rate, which indicated distress. He sent me directly to the hospital to have another nonstress test done there. It showed the same thing. They did an ultrasound and the baby was not moving at all. The next hour was a blur.They rushed me off to surgery to do an emergency c-section. I had called my husband and told him to leave work and come straight to the hospital. He got there just in time to come into the operating room with me. When my daughter was born she wasn't breathing or moving. She had an apgar score of 2 and then 3. She was pretty much lifeless. They put her on a ventilator and inserted a central line into her umbilicus so that they could give her glucose. Her glucose level was critically low. She developed some other complications, including some neurological abnormalities, which presented like seizures at first. She was in the ICU for two weeks, but she came around and had no long-term complications from her prematurity. They gave me a small room adjacent to the ICU, so I stayed with her in the hospital for the whole two weeks. During the time that my daughter was in the ICU, the only person in my family that came to see her was my mom. When she would visit she would be very cold to me. I tried to hug her once and she pushed me away and told me not to do that anymore. I would tell her that I loved her and she would just give me a look of disapproval and never return the expression. That hurt more deeply than she'll ever know. She would hold my daughter and rock her and then she would leave. On one occasion, I asked her why my dad hadn't been up to see his granddaughter. "She almost died," I said. "He doesn't have to visit with me, but doesn't he at least want to see his grandchild?" "No," she said coldly. "Your dad has already lost one daughter this year. He can't handle losing a grandchild on top of that. He doesn't want to get to know her because he's afraid he'll get attached to her and he can't deal with having his heart broken all over again.""Mom, I'm not dead. I'm still here," I said. "The only thing keeping us apart is his religion.""You're dead to him, Cheryl. You're dead to all of us."I can't imagine ever saying something like that to my child. Does she not realize how much her words hurt? How can you care for an infant, nursing her against your breast every day for over a year, rocking her to sleep, soothing her when she's ill or hurt? What about the times when she would quietly sit next to my bed as I slept, holding my hand and stroking my hair while I was completely unaware of her presence as I now do with my young daughter? What about the worry she must have felt as a mother, watching her 8-year-old daughter walking into the house with her entire left leg cut up and bleeding from a nasty wipe out on her new bike? What about the time she spent sitting with me in the hospital room when I was 11-years-old, after I had my appendix removed, watching The Parent Trap with me on TV? I thought it was so funny. I would laugh, but it hurt like hell to laugh so I would brace my abdomen with a pillow and try to suppress the laughter, which made her laugh, and that made me laugh even more, which made the pain even worse, until I was laughing so hard I had tears coming down my cheeks. She saved my first set of teeth when they fell out. She held my hand when I crossed the street. She would hold my long brown hair back from my face when I would lean over the toilet to vomit. She would comfort me when I was sad. She packed my lunches in grade school and made me eat pea soup from a strawberry shortcake thermos instead of buying pizza in the cafeteria, and she made me promise to buy white milk instead of chocolate milk. She prepared my lessons for school when she homeschooled me. She taught me how to shave my legs. She was there for my graduation from college. She was there for my wedding. She was there for me my whole life

[NaddiaAoC]

A couple months had passed and my sister had not yet seen my daughter. I didn't really care at that point. She called one day and talked to my husband and asked him if she could come over to see the baby. My husband came to me and said, "You need to leave for a while." I was confused. "I have to leave?" I asked. "Why?""Your sister called and she's coming over to see the baby, so you need to leave the house for a little while," he said. "Are you fucking kidding me?" I asked. "I'm not leaving my own house so that my nutty sister can come over to see my daughter without me being here. If she wants to see the baby she can come over while I'm here.""She won't come over," he said. "She'll only come over if you're not here, so I assured her you won't be here.""Well that was a pretty stupid thing to say. You might want to check with me before you go assuring people that I'm going to leave my house so that they can come see my kid. I couldn't care less if she comes over. In fact, with that kind of an attitude I'd just as soon she not come," I said.He stormed off in a huff to call her back and tell her that I was being rude and that I refused to leave. Who's being rude? Whatever... It wasn't working. As the months passed it was growing increasingly evident that our marriage was doomed. We both knew that it was only a matter of time until it crumbled completely. So we started talking about separation. Our counselor even suggested it. He didn't think our marriage was salvageable at that point, and thought that the only thing that might help was a separation. He encouraged us to split up for at least six months without moving on to any other relationships just to see if the distance would help to put things in a different perspective. Our lives were really heading in opposite directions. He continued going to meetings three times a week and out in field service. He kept hanging out with his JW friends and my family who continued to have nothing to do with me. He would even plan parties and have them at other peoples' houses, and of course I wasn't invited. I tried to encourage him to go out with me and to get involved in some social activities with non-JW's, but he wanted nothing to do with people who weren't JW's. "How are we supposed to function as a married couple when you only want to associate with people who refuse to associate with your wife?" I asked him. His response would be something along the lines of, "Hey, it's not my fault that you're bitter and angry and don't have any friends anymore. If you'd come back to the truth we could be a happy family!" Oh, brilliant solution. Why didn't I think of that?Meanwhile, I had discovered an ex JW online message board. It was months after leaving the religion and I still hadn't read anything anti-JW. I really hadn't scrutinized the religion at all. Someone on the board suggested that I read Crisis of Conscience by Raymond Franz, which is an excellent book for JW's who are having doubts or who have just left the religion. My husband discovered my participation on that message board and blew a gasket. He told me that I could have "worldly" friends if I wanted and that I could even go to other churches if I wanted, but he absolutely forbade me from having anything to do with "apostates." I told him that his role as "head of the house" ended when I left that male-dominated religion and that he had no authority whatsoever to forbid me from talking with "apostates" or anyone else. He disconnected the internet so that I couldn't post on the message board anymore. Then, without telling me, he cancelled my access to our credit cards. He withdrew all of our money from our joint banking account and put it in a personal account that he had set up. I didn't realize he had done this until I was standing in the check out line at the grocery store with $200 worth of groceries bagged and in my cart and no way to pay for them. He knew that I was going to the grocery story beforehand, yet let me go without telling me that I had no way to pay for the groceries. That was so embarrassing. I had to leave the store, unable to pay for the groceries. When I confronted him about it later, he said that he no longer trusted me with his money, but that was ridiculous. With the exception of taking a few hundred dollars to pay for the motel 6 months earlier when I had attempted to move out (and at a time when I was working myself) and using cash to pay for the books I was reading, I didn't spend money without telling him. I saw this as nothing more than another attempt to establish control in our marriage. I had allowed him control as my "head" during the first few years of our marriage. I considered myself "subject" to him. Now I no longer looked up to him as my leader, but I saw him as my equal. He simply didn't like that. So he let me go to the grocery store to do our grocery shopping without any way to pay for the items I was purchasing. I was infuriated. The situation escalated into frequent loud arguments with one or both of us storming through the house yelling and slamming doors. On several occasions our arguments woke the baby and she began to cry. This wasn't the kind of atmosphere that I wanted her to be raised in. What's the point in staying together for the child if the child is going to live in constant fear of her parents? This wasn't going to work out. Wouldn't it be better to end the marriage now while she is too young to ever remember us being together than to push it as long as we can and possibly end up divorcing when she's older? I had so many things to consider now that she was here, and I finally came to the decision that it was time to leave when she was four months old. I had taken off work for the few months since I had given birth, so I started looking for a new job. It took a couple weeks for me to land a job and start bringing in money. I took a position as a critical care nurse in a large pediatric hospital in Cincinnati. I had previously worked in adult care so it was a whole new learning experience for me, but I embraced the challenge. During those last couple weeks at home with my husband the contention escalated into physical abuse. We had a disagreement and I was challenging him and his "authority" and he told me to get out of the room. I refused to drop it and continued to challenge him and he started shoving me and slamming his hands against my chest to get me out of the room, and then he locked me out. He was never physically aggressive with me or anyone else prior to that. In fact, one thing that I always loved about him was his gentle nature. I didn't think too much of it at the time. It's not like he hauled off and punched me. He was trying to get me out of his room and used a physically aggressive means of doing so. I didn't appreciate that, but didn't really think of him as abusive either. However, the next day I was nursing my daughter and when she reached up with her little hand and touched my chest it hurt like hell. I looked under my shirt at my chest and there were bruises all over it. That pissed me off. I went to my husband and showed him the bruises. I told him that I don't care how mad he gets at me, he has no right to hit me. I had never hit him, not once, and I had been plenty pissed at him on many occasions. We both pushed each others buttons, but that's no excuse to bruise someone up. I expected an apology from him. Instead he looked at me coldly and said, "If I bruised you up every time you deserved it you'd be black and blue all the time."Holy shit! I couldn't believe my ears. I just looked at him in disbelief. That was a huge red flag for me. No more jerking off. I didn't feel safe living there anymore. This was the man who had been my best friend for several years. He had grown up in a home watching his father beat the crap out of his mother many times. He had expressed to me the guilt he felt as a child for not doing more to "protect" his mom from the physical abuse she endured. If there was one thing in the world he hated, it was a man who would hit a woman. To hear something like that come out of his mouth blew my mind. I realized then and there that we all have "breaking points," and that when pushed to our limits we can all do things we wouldn't normally do. I realized at that moment that this man had absolutely no respect for me whatsoever. He had dehumanized me. In the same way that one race of people can oppress, abuse, and kill another race of people through dehumanizing them, he was capable of the same. I wasn't his "wife" or his "friend" anymore; I was a "rebellious apostate." For the first time in our marriage I felt scared of him, and I didn't want to spend another day there with him. I requested $1500 so that I could get an apartment and some groceries. That would hold me over until my first paycheck came in. I told him that he could keep the house and everything else. I just wanted out. He willingly gave me the money, and I went out and rented an apartment the next day. I had reconnected with an old JW friend. One of my old pioneer buddies had married this guy and I had gotten to know him a little, but not well. I had heard a couple years earlier that he had left the JW's along with his wife and a couple other friends of mine. It was all very shocking at the time. But it was wonderful to see him again after several years. He really helped me get established on my own. He brought his truck over and helped me move out into my own apartment, and he really supported me while I was leaving the JW religion. He had left the religion for doctrinal reasons along with his wife, but had come out of the closet about his homosexuality shortly after that. He and his wife divorced on good terms and both had moved on to new relationships. He and his new partner would invite me out with them to do things socially, so I was able to start establishing a support system of my own. To this day he's one of my closest friends and I love him dearly.More to follow....Cheryl No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means. -George Bernard Shaw

[NaddiaAoC]

A New Life BeginsMoving out on my own proved to be a tremendous growing experience for me. I was now living in a small one bedroom apartment in a nice community. I had set my old waterbed up myself, the one my parents had bought me when I was around 15. I had no dresser so all of my clothes and my daughter's clothes sat in boxes and laundry baskets in the bedroom. The living room was devoid of furniture, a big empty box with beige carpeted floors and ivory colored walls. Cardboard boxes of old pictures, books, childhood toys, and other memories that had been pulled out of the storage closet were lined up against the wall. I had no plates or glasses or cutlery, just some plastic utensils that I had bought with the groceries that I put into the empty refrigerator.I sat on the floor in the middle of the vacant living room that first night on my own. I felt so vulnerable and so unsure of the future. It had been two years since I first looked at that website and dared to jump into the debate. I had been racked with so many changes since then, unexpectedly and unprepared. I pulled a box over and opened it up. It was filled with pictures

[NaddiaAoC]

I was also really coming to grips with my atheism on an emotional level. I had one experience at work that I will never forget. I had only been working in the pediatric ICU for a couple months when I received this patient. In report, I was told that the three month old baby had been accidentally dropped on the floor by her father when he was giving her a bath, but that the police were skeptical of his story. She had retinal hemorrhaging and other neurological injuries consistent with having been shaken to the point of going into cardiac arrest. Apparently upon realizing that she was no longer breathing her father called 911 and then attempted CPR on her, but it was futile. Within 48 hours they had done a brain death test on her and she failed it. As I was taking over her care I was told that we would be doing a second brain death test just to confirm the results of the first, and if the results were the same we would be disconnecting life support.When I walked into the room that night I wasn't prepared for what I saw. The infant lying in the bed looked exactly like my daughter. She was three months younger, but because my daughter was premature she was almost the exact same size. She had the same pale skin and head full of straight, soft dark brown hair. Her features were so similar that I felt as if I was looking at my own daughter and I became so sick to my stomach that I had to leave the room. I felt a knot in my throat and the whole night it took everything I had to hold back my tears and stay calm with the family.The beautiful little girl was kept alive on a ventilator. Medication kept her heart pumping. I assisted the doctors as they did the brain death test and once again she failed it. She was pronounced brain dead that night. Her parents were both there and they were informed of the results. They were told that we would be disconnecting life support, but that we would wait until they were ready. They had already prepared for the outcome. The mother wanted to hold her little daughter before we disconnected life support, so with the assistance of a couple others I placed her in her mother's arms while keeping her connected to the ventilator. Her mother looked surprisingly strong and peaceful. Through tear-filled eyes she looked up at me with a weak smile and said, "It's ok. This isn't my daughter. This is just her body. My daughter has already gone to heaven to be with God. I knew that before the doctors did their tests." It was everything I could do to suppress my emotions and fight back the tears. I think she must have realized that because it almost seemed as if she was trying to comfort me, or maybe she was just reassuring herself. I don't know. She told me that she had wanted this baby so badly. She told me that she and her husband had tried for several years before she was finally able to conceive, and that with her approaching 40 years of age she would probably never be able to have another child. This was her "miracle" child. She told me that she didn't understand why God would give her this child for only three months and then take her away so soon, but that he must have a reason. Whatever that reason, she knew that her daughter was safe in heaven with God and that gave her the comfort she needed.Knowing the likely cause of the infant's injuries made it so fucking difficult to watch the father standing next to the mother as she stroked her daughter's pale, lifeless face. After holding her for a while she told me that she was ready. We disconnected the sweet child from the ventilator and turned off the medication that kept her heart pumping. She didn't take a single breath. I watched her little lips turn blue as she quickly died in her mother's arms. And my heart ached so badly for them both. The mother cradled the infant for a good while and then laid her back down in the bed. She left the room and went to be with her family while I bathed the small child and put her in a pretty little dress. The endotracheal tube and central line had to remain, but I made her as natural looking as possible. I made little tiny handprints and footprints for her mother and I cut off a small lock of her soft brown hair. I placed the hair in a pretty little cloth pouch and I gave it to her mother. The family came to say their final goodbyes to the young girl and then they left. I placed her small body in a shroud and then wrapped her in a beautiful quilt and carried her down to the morgue. With teeth clinched as I fought back my tears, I placed her on a shelf in a refrigerated room and closed the vault-like door. I could only imagine how the mother would feel as she left the hospital that night without the most precious thing in her life to return to her home filled with small pink dresses, diapers, and a crib. I spent the last three hours of my shift that night incapacitated with anger and grief, crying uncontrollably in an empty room on the unit. The other nurses seemed to understand. They had all been through similar experiences themselves, but had somehow found a way to deal with this type of thing. That's something that I would have to do too if I were to stay at this job. They would check on me occasionally, but left me alone.She's in heaven? God gave her to you? What the fuck kind of god gives a mother a child for three fucking months, just long enough to get incredibly attached to her, and then takes her back like that?! God didn't give her to you! You and your husband fucked and she was the unlucky winner of that sperm lottery. God didn't take her! Why the fuck does God need ANOTHER kid?! Doesn't he have enough kids dying from starvation, war, and disease every fucking day? God didn't give you the damn kid and he didn't take the damn kid back. She was born because you and your husband screwed each other and now she's dead because your fucking husband killed her - plain and simple! God, I was so fucking angry!I had a really hard time dealing with that over the next few weeks. Every time I would hold my daughter in my lap at home and look at her beautiful soft brown hair I would think of the lock of hair that I cut off for that mother. I would cry as I held my daughter tightly, so frightened by the futility and fleeting nature of life, and simultaneously so happy that my precious daughter was alive, happy and healthy. I nearly left the ICU after that, but decided to stick it out. I lasted nearly three years, but ultimately couldn't continue doing it. It's so difficult when you have a young child of your own. Every kid that comes in with cancer or liver failure or trauma, every kid that dies or is left with neurological devastation, you know that this could be your kid. Parents lose kids every day, good parents. You can try your damnedest to be the best mother or father to your child and it doesn't make a bit of difference. In the blink of an eye they're gone. I couldn't make any sense out of it. What sense is there to be made? It's nature. It's the nature of life and death. And nature is a bitch. It doesn't give a damn about any of us. I followed the little girl's story in the newspaper. On the day of her funeral her father was arrested for her death, and later he confessed to shaking her to death. For quite some time I felt intensely angry about all things "god" and "religion." My exposure to sickness, suffering and death in the ICU compounded that, I believe. I wrote a poem in connection with that experience. I'm definitely no poet so take this for the amateur work that it is, but I'll include it here because I think it captured my thoughts and feelings at the time.An old woman is bornWhile a young child diesA mother's world haltsBut no one else criesIt's only a lifeNobody caresNothing was lostExcept a few prayersA fading memoryTo those who remainA small plot of landA headstone and a nameGods are createdAnd heaven is bornMother's little angelIs helping her mournBut the old woman will perishAnd the memories held dearThe gods and the angelsWill all disappearShe will be forgottenAlong with her seedHer existence was meaninglessAs was her creedThere was no greater purposeAll that she believedWas merely a wayTo cope while she grieved No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means. -George Bernard Shaw