As JWs, we became very good at accepting things we didn’t agree with. Trying to change anything or do anything other than accept the status quo was not only futile, but potentially even dangerous. You could bring shame on yourself, your family, on God, and on the organisation, only to end up cast out into the world and dutifully devoured by Satan.

However, now that you are out, acceptance has a whole new meaning. It has nothing to do with accepting a way of life imposed upon you by people who have no right to tell you what to do anyway. It’s about accepting yourself, others, and your experiences. It’s about accepting what you can change, what you can’t, and learning the difference between the two in your post-JW life.  

Too often I have seen former JWs allow themselves to be eaten up with resentment and anger over things they simply can’t change. Resentment over the years lost. Anger at family members who were ‘responsible’ for putting them through this life. Frustration when comparing their lives to non-JWs.

While these feelings are understandable, allowing them to take over your life will do nothing to improve your life now. It will not bring you peace, and it will not bring you happiness. It will not change the past, and it most certainly will not change other people. It’s quite simply futile. Don’t waste your precious life being angry and resentful at things you can’t change. The organisation has taken enough. Give it nothing more.  

Now that you are free, it’s time to identify what you can and can’t change in the absence of imposed JW values and personality traits. It’s about focussing your limited time and energy in ways that work for you, not against you, to help you create a life you choose for yourself.  This is what this post is going to explore.  

The ‘serenity prayer’

This all reminds me of a familiar old saying which I first came across nailed to the inside of my woodworking teacher’s cupboard in high school. This cupboard was at the front of the classroom, and the door was always open, so it was always on full display:

“God (lord/universe/whatever), grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Perhaps my teacher needed a bit of help dealing with a classroom of unruly adolescents in a room full of lathes, ban saws, chisels, and other objects with similarly latent lethal potential. Perhaps it helped him pick his battles and let go of the million and one annoying but non-life-threatening things we were getting up to, but which were futile for him to bother about. Perhaps the saying helped him to focus on actually teaching and supervising, so that he could step in when we were about to do something really stupid.

This saying is known as ‘the serenity prayer’. Its origins are attributed to various sources, and for a while it was adopted by Alcoholics Anonymous because accepting things we can’t change is an extremely powerful tool for letting go of frustration, anger, and resentment, directed at both ourselves and others, while knowing what we can change focusses our energy where we actually can make a difference.

Breaking down this saying and applying it to our post-JW lives can be a really useful tool for us too.

…‘the serenity to accept the things I cannot change’…

The first part of the ‘serenity prayer’, ‘the serenity to accept the things I cannot change’, is about the peace of mind we feel when we let go of things we have no control over, and therefore can’t change anyway.

As JWs, we didn’t really have control over anything, and we ourselves were being controlled and didn’t even realise it. As a result, we never learnt about what we can and can’t change. We were simply told that if we all did all the ‘right’ things, everything would all be perfect at some distant point in the future anyway, so there was no need to worry about it. We didn’t need to learn to accept our human condition, we just needed to be patient and wait. We never learnt to let go of things we have no control over, because we didn’t really know what we had control over and what we didn’t. We never learnt that life isn’t fair, either inside the JW organisation or out of it. Sometimes things go wrong which are simply no one’s fault. There is no one to blame, not even yourself.

What can’t we change?

We can’t change anything which we have no control over. This includes the past. Our family. Our family who are still JWs despite all the evidence we try and show them. Other people. How other people drive. The weather. Pretty much everything which is outside of ourselves really.

For the sake of our own contentment and peace of mind, we need to accept anything we can’t control. Fighting it is as futile as fighting the weather.

Accept your experience

In the previous post, Recovery Priority #1: Get to know yourself, Step 1 was all about digging into your own story. Understanding how you got to where you are now and the influences of various people, situations, and experiences which have brought you to this point. Hopefully the exercise helped you to see your life as someone looking in from the outside, and helped you develop compassion for yourself as you would for anyone else who went through what you did.

The point of this was to learn to accept your experience. Accept your story. There is no blame involved either for you or anyone else. While you may have regrets, the aim is to learn from them and apply those lessons in the future. Don’t let yourself wallow around in things from the past which you can’t change. Regrets are normal, but their purpose is not to torture yourself indefinitely, it is to remind you not to do whatever that thing was ever again. So, note the lesson, and move on.

You are where you are right now as a result of everything which has gone before. Good or bad, no previous experience has been wasted. It all contributes to who you are now. Your experience in this world, and your perspective of it, is unique, and deserves to be accepted.  

Accept yourself

Self-acceptance is not something we are ever encouraged to do as JWs, because this is not conducive to bending over backwards to please the Governing Body. But now, as part of getting to know yourself, learn to accept who you are as a person. Identify your values and accept them. Recognise your needs and accept them. Identify your strengths and flaws and accept those too.

Acceptance does not necessarily mean avoiding action to address flaws, or giving in to needs which may be self-destructive, it just means recognising that they are a part of you. Fighting it will not help. You would just be fighting yourself and we have all done enough of that already. If you fight yourself you will very likely just end up hating yourself, or blaming yourself because you ‘should’ be someone other than who you are. Just accept those quirks of your unique personality and learn to work with them as best as you can to get the outcomes that you want.

As an example, if you are naturally argumentative but you genuinely value and want peaceful relationships, try to bring your behaviours in line with your values. Notice the next time you pick an unnecessary fight, and let it go. Learn to apologise if you realised it too late, and try to make amends. It’s all about noticing when you are acting in a way which is taking you away from what you want rather than towards it, and adjusting your behaviour when you notice that happening. Keeping your personal values front of mind will help with this.   

Accept those who brought you into the religion

In the course of digging about in your life story, you likely identified a few key people who have influenced and shaped your personality and your life, including those who persuaded you to become a JW. If you were born-in, you also likely identified how not just you, but your family and likely earlier generations of your family, got tangled up in the JW organisation.

For me, I asked myself what their experiences were like. Why did they feel the need to join? What was happening for them in their lives that made them feel like joining this organisation was a good idea? Were they experiencing some pain and loss? Were they experiencing other difficulties and then along came this organisation which claimed to have all the answers?

Remember, the way the organisation hooks people in is not to tell them upfront about all of the harmful aspects of the religion which will likely tear their family apart. It is to entice them with thoughts of seeing dead loved ones again, the belief that they will survive the end of the world, and the satisfaction of pleasing the most important Being in the universe. If they had understood all of the implications upfront, if they could have looked into the future and seen the fallout for generations to come, do you think they would still have joined?

There are four generations of JWs on one side of my family, and three on the other. Around 100 years of JW history running through both sides. I would love to know if they would do it all again with the benefit of hindsight. The years of forgone family celebrations, the lack of contact with the non-JW branches of the family, the heartache over various disfellowshippings, disassociations, and medical dramas over blood, and all for what? Conditional ‘friendships’ with people who are all judging you behind your back anyway.

Either way though, whether my forebears would do it all again or not, I do know they all did what they thought was best with the information they had available, and that is all any of us can do at any time in our lives.

There is nothing we can do to change the fact that we have been JWs. Either born-in or brought in later, blaming the people we see as responsible for it will just drive an even deeper wedge between them and us, which is just what the organisation wants. You will be playing right into its hands. So let it go.

Have empathy for those who brought you into the religion as fellow humans also trying to find their way in the world. Love them for the flawed people they are (or were), forgive them for the impact their actions may have had on you, and let it go.

Accept others

Something the JW organisation was very good at drumming into us is that we are not perfect, but we were still somehow ‘better’ than others because we were in the ‘Truth’. People who were not in the ‘Truth’ were not to be fully trusted, and therefore could not be accepted as they were.

The self-righteousness which comes with this way of thinking can make it hard to see others as people just like us. In reality, people really are just like us, trying to make their way through life as best they can, making the most of their respective situations and life circumstances. We are just one of the billions of humans on the planet, all of us hopelessly imperfect and a little bit crazy in our own unique ways. We are not so different from each other after all.

Accept that humans can and do, very often, say and do stupid and even harmful things, even you. There will always be people, groups, and viewpoints that you don’t agree with, and while there may be scope for change, and justifiable reasons to get outraged, pick your battles. Don’t waste time and energy fighting futile battles against things you will never be able to change. Try to accept our fellow humans for the weirdos that they are, and know that you are in good company.

Accept that things don’t always turn out the way you want

Unfortunately, there are things in life, whether you are a JW or not, which simply don’t go the way you want. As JWs though, we were always given a scapegoat (something to blame => Satan’s system), and an out where we could believe that one day this will never happen again (future paradise).

The trick now is to learn and accept that sometimes, things just don’t work out, and there is no one to blame, and nothing that will make it go away. Despite your best efforts, things just go wrong sometimes, and you will need to deal with the consequences, and accept the outcome. You may agonise about your role in it, trying to work out what you did or didn’t do to cause it, look for someone or something to blame, wonder why life is so unfair, and keep wishing that that thing had never happened the way it did.

When these things happen, agonising over every detail, blaming yourself or others when no one could have foreseen it anyway, is an exercise in torture. There will likely have been things you could have done differently, but other things may have happened anyway so that the end result was the same. Just note the lesson you have learned (if any), and try to move on. Unfortunately, things going wrong sometimes is a side-effect of being alive. I know which one I would prefer.

‘…the courage to change the things I can’…

The second part of the ‘serenity prayer’ is about the need for courage to make changes in our lives. This is never easy, and particularly for former JWs.

The religion never allowed us to change anything, so having courage to change it (unless it was to do with giving up your job or house to go pioneering of course) was never really an issue. As long as we had the ‘courage’ to go out witnessing and stand up for the religion when it was required, that was enough.

However, now that you are out, having the courage to make tough decisions for yourself is an essential life skill. Change can be really hard. But you have already made one tough decision, leaving the organisation, so don’t stop there.

What can we change?

We can change the things we have control over. And what is that? Ourselves. Our reactions. Our thoughts, behaviours, and emotions. Our decisions. Our lives.

We have the power to change anything which is dragging us down or no longer serving us. We have the power to make good decisions for ourselves which will improve the quality of our life. We also have the power to help others.

How do we know the difference between what we can and can’t change?

The best way to tell the difference between what we can and cannot change is to ask ourselves whether we have control over that thing. Ask yourself, is ‘insert thing’ my responsibility? If I won’t change it, should anyone else? As a basic rule of thumb, if something is your responsibility, then you have control over it. Likewise if you have control over something, then that thing is your responsibility.

While we can’t change our JW past, other people, or anything outside of our control, accepting what we can’t change will bring more peace of mind and contentment than fighting it ever will. Resentment and anger is natural after leaving this religion, but don’t let that debilitate you or turn you into a victim. You have given them enough. You are a Witness no more, and now it’s your turn to live.

In the next article, we are going to look at one of the most important things you have control over, and responsibility for: Your happiness.

Until then, wishing you all the very best,

Renee