It’s a well-established fact that we learn what love looks like from those around us as we are growing up. While some of us may have had strong examples of loving relationships modelled by our parents or caregivers, chances are, if your family were Jehovah’s Witnesses, all of you were at least somewhat affected…
In Part 1 we identified three reasons why implementing an effective self-care routine is so difficult for former JWs: So where to now? We will now explore three corresponding ways to address these challenges, to help us make self-care a priority in our lives. 1. Back to basics: Identify what you need, and learn…
Well, it’s the start of a new year and as a good a time as any to tackle a subject that is foreign to many JWs and former JWs: Self-care. While we have all likely heard about it, particularly given how much attention it gets these days, knowing what it is, and doing it,…
So, you are out and about in what feels like June but is really October or November, and you spot it for the first time that year: Christmas decorations. If you are like me, you check the date and go, ‘Already?! Seriously?!’ While many people love it (and I’m talking, ‘Let’s wear Christmas themed…
While we all judge and compare ourselves to others from time to time, for Jehovah’s Witnesses, it’s a way of life. Members of the JW religion experience a strange dichotomy where they mean nothing as individuals, but as one of the only group on earth with God’s approval, they are superior to all other…
Making good decisions is an essential life skill you will never learn as a JW. The organisation simply cannot have its members making decisions for themselves all over the place and not involving them. That would be chaos, and they need to control it, so they keep members infantalised and dependent on them to…
Critical thinking is an essential life skill that improves the quality of our lives, but it can be a vague concept to grasp, particularly for anyone who has not been taught what it is and how to go about it. In this post we will explore a practical example by applying the critical thinking…
Critical thinking is an essential life skill that you will never learn as a JW. Without us even realising it, the Organisation trains us not to think too critically about anything, and it can take years to understand or even notice the full extent of the impact on our critical thinking skills. If you…
Damn. It was three days out from my husband’s birthday and I realised I had done it again: Totally forgotten it. “I’m so sorry!’ I exclaimed, thoroughly disappointed in myself, ‘I’m just not used to remembering birthdays!’. We’ve probably all had a similar experience at one time or another because as former JWs, we…
Following on from the earlier post covering numbers one to five, this post covers the remaining six to ten essential life skills that you will never learn as a JW. As a quick re-cap, the first five are: And now for essential life skills six to ten: 6. Knowing who you are and where…