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…
In Part 3 we pulled apart the various JW views of work and how these may have affected us, but now we are going to focus on identifying your own values about work and what you want from it in your post-JW life. Like pretty much everything in our lives after leaving the religion,…
Work. Some of us love it and some of us hate it, but either way, we all spend a lot of time doing it. While it’s normal to have the odd bad day at work, no one enjoys doing work they genuinely dislike, day, after day, after day. As JWs, our work simply HAD…
This post explores how the meaning of death is distorted in Jehovah’s Witness teachings and culture, and three ways that rethinking everything we formerly believed about death can help us learn to be truly alive. Reassessing JW beliefs about death Many of us struggle to figure out what we want after leaving the Witnesses….
Self-help, Life coaching, Counsellors, Therapists, Psychologists, and Psychiatrists: What’s the difference?! What do I need? This post is about the many different ‘helping’ options out there to help you find the one that is right for you. As JWs we were never encouraged to seek any form of mental health treatment outside of the…
This post is all about learning to be happy after leaving the Witnesses. We explore happiness, contentment, and satisfaction, and what these concepts mean when the JW distortions have been stripped away. Despite everything you were told as a JW, your own personal happiness is actually extremely important. Feeling happy is important, pursuing what…
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…
As self-indulgent as it may sound to anyone who has been a JW, getting to know yourself is the best thing you can do to help yourself learn to live after leaving. As a JW, your entire sense of self is set aside, squashed, and told that it has no right to exist. The…