i haven’t talked about my family in, um, quite a while, so this is a ranty update (warning: personal, kind of)
my sister was the first one to really de-jw herself (lol how do i even call it?). i don’t really remember when it started, i think around 2018-19, once her daughter was born. it’s a sensitive topic: the father wasn’t (and isn’t) a jw and they didn’t want to be together. my sister had a judicial committee and they allowed her to continue in the religion, but it was obvious that stuff changed for her. a lot of people began to soft-shun her despite everything, and it was clear that the majority of the ones who stuck by her were waiting for the child to become another worker for their doctrine. because my sister was studying a career and had a baby to take care of, she stopped attending the meetings, and i think that was the beginning of the end.
(come to think about it, my sister is the only person in the family with the proper ex jw story. i never got baptized to begin with, and i never bought into the doctrine - the older i got, the less i wanted that life. but even being as young as 8 years old i had problems with god’s way of doing things.)
ever since then, me and my sister have grown a lot closer. she’s actually the only person in my family that i’ve come out to (my brother must know i’m not straight, because i was the designated queer kid in the high school we both attended, so). she’s told me about all the things she has learned to accept about the world around her and the stuff she’s had to leave in the past, and her experiences being an active jw for so much of her teenagerhood. in return, i talked to her about my bad streak when i was 15/16 - which she caused, more or less. but i’ve also been very blunt about not blaming her, especially in those very first conversations that i was so, so careful around lol. i still remember the first time she made an atheist dig to my parents: i was doing the dishes and she leaned in to whisper it on my ear, and while we both laughed i felt euphoric. i finally had someone in my side, after so many years of feeling so ostracized from my own family. the euphoria has morphed into a tighter bond between us. it’s just great, having someone in the house i can be genuinely honest with - and knowing that i’m the same kind of person for her.
my mom came as a bit of a surprise, at least in the beginning. in the line for the taxi, she commented to me that she’d been kicked out from the group chat of the congregation. i’ve always known she has gripes with some members of the community, a highlight of those being her brother: an elder on his congregation that ran away to a town in the south when it came to taking care of their sick mother. but to hear her being alright with people soft-shunning her because of her inactivity, it was a completely different thing. it felt like a step in the right direction, which was something i was actually right about.
that conversation happened a couple of years ago (we were maskless, i think), and we had another one pretty recently. she opened up to me about her faith and her experiences with other jws, especially shining a light on their hypocrisy. i’m honestly kind of used to these stories, but this was different somehow: a story about a flirty brother who passed the line of self-confidence into manipulative charm, and how he made it to bethel before people discovered that he was gay. immediately i perked up, and i suggested a different perspective. how can you expect that a gay guy will just leave the organization, having been there his whole life? he’d lose everything, everyone. to my surprise, my mother agreed. the conversation about faith then took a turn when she talked about a trip she’d had earlier that year with one of the sisters of the congregation. i’d generously call them “family friends”, and my mother refers to the sister as, well, the sister she’d never had. but then she told me some things they shared during the vacation, most of those things she didn’t agree with on a fundamental level. said sister’s desire of marrying her early-20s daughter as soon as possible, or her nonchalant talk of the racism they’ve experienced in the congregation and the organization at large. it was almost exhilarating hearing how my mom actually spoke her mind at those moments, pointing out to her how fucked up some of those things were. i suddenly felt the need to be very careful with my speech, as this was a pivotal moment. there was also mentions of how desperate jws are to keep everyone sheltered and how weird it is how badly they deem young jws that pursue higher education. all of this stuff that she thought for herself, and i was over the moon.
it’s hard to say for sure what she thinks of her faith as of now. recently, my sister barged through my door to tell me the news: my mom was watching the tv, this one show that unmasks certain cults and organizations. and guess what they were dissecting that day lol. my dad got very mad and, to avoid discussions, my mom turned off the tv. but that got her curious, so she did some digging, and ended up knowing about the cases of child abuse. she found my sister in the kitchen, and went on about how angry she was that she’d been defending a religion that was just like the others, covering these cases instead of protecting the people at risk. it felt pivotal enough for my sister to talk to me, but this just seems like a growing trend. if anything, i’m sure my mom hasn’t identified as a jw to other people in years, and i’m sure it will stay that way.
my dad... oof. i just don’t see any situation in which he turns his back at the organization. he’s mastered the art of picking and choosing, and behaves just like that when it comes to the doctrine. i think less of him as someone brainwashed by the organization, and more like someone who’s using it to shape the worldviews he already holds. i’m afraid there’s no hope to end that situation over there, and every conversation we have about the issue is war on earth. i’ve become tired - forgive me for stop fighting. it’s just a detriment of my mental health, when i consider that i have good relationships with everyone else in my family. it pains me to say that it’s not worth the effort, if there ever is a point of return for him.
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