Sing praises to the Broken

I have some great memories from my childhood of congregation picnics, gatherings, and camping trips. The food was always so good and the camaraderie was pure and unquestionably genuine. I can still see the stark generational contrasts through my youthful eyes. Every child was a child of the same age and every adult was old.


I can hear the laughter of my father and the other elders as joked in their ancient colloquy. I can still smell the BBQ.


All of the cooking and seating was coordinated peacefully and without a single grumbling of discord.


I absorbed this symphony of cohesion without ever actually listening to the notes being played. After all, this was my tribe and my community whom I trusted them. These pristine images are the underpinnings of my indoctrination and they were lies.


My parents and the parents of my friends were engaging in a ruse. They were play acting unity, all the while suffering silently.


Many of the wives and children were being abused. If not by their spouses, then by the oppressive doctrines of the Watchtower. Some had doubts about it all. Others were having their arteries hardened with guilt over some trivial thing the Watchtower deemed a sin. Something that years later, might be reordered as a "conscience matter." Some of them were shunning someone they claimed to love.


Some of them were gay, lesbian, trans or queer and were trying desperately to reconcile this truth with their beliefs. Many in that group had resigned to never becoming the person they knew they were. All were participating in this fallacious dance. We had to.


"Happy are those who are conscious of their spiritual need and everyone will know that you are my disciples if you have love among yourselves."


Discord was a sin and it was your fault. It was always your fault. The progression of this idea is the dissolution of any truly unified exercise, as you cannot force unity; you can, however, force people to behave as though they are united by punishing their inability to play that role.


With the Watchtower, expulsion is the ultimate price one can pay for not pretending to enjoy the lies they are forced to live. This is exactly why we have the term PIMO (Physically in mentally out) in the #exjw community. These brave people are desperately trying to maintain some semblance of family, lifestyle, and dignity as they plot their exit from this manufactured community. It is a dangerous path to walk. The Watchtower makes it clear that they are committed to breaking anyone who leaves.




Almost every part of their doctrine is a direct assault on the healthy functioning of your psyche.


The idea that you are born inherently bad and need to beg for forgiveness at all times, is the thing that destroyed your innocence as a child and caused you to fear everything. It caused you to despair even when you were working nonstop and as selflessly as possible.  Each meeting you attended, was a reminder of how there is no way you can ever do enough to ever measure up or redeem your horrible self and all the sins you've committed. Kindness, for you, was "undeserved."


Still, your smile must widen. The community is good. You are happy and this is unity. When your friends vanished (likely because their parents stopped being Jehovah's Witnesses) you dare not ask what happened to them or why you can no longer visit their home. You will be given new friends and you will like them because they are your brother or sisters in the truth.


This is your community. This is the where the tent of God resides and never forget:





So be afraid. Carry fear with you as you try to embrace the plastic props that masquerade as your Ken. Fear any thoughts of independence and never forget




I didn't know it at the time, but they were conditioning our minds to devour themselves the moment we ever left our "community." They need us to think that we have become everything they said was bad and that we were no longer worth anything.


They understand that family is an important institution for the survival of a social species.


They know that collectively we are strong.


They know that our large brains have allowed us to go from being exposed to the brutal elements of the outdoors to moving seamlessly through the air-conditioned corridors of industry and technology.




They have looked out at the towering spires of our greatest cities and seen that they were built collectively using a concert of mind and a compression of will. They realize the breadth of our connectivity is a complement to our thinking and that we can do anything if we are set free.


They know all these things, and instead of using that knowledge to mold us into our best selves, they have stolen the vigor from our instincts and turned our natural energies into machines that mine our most precious resources; our need for each other.


Now, when we venture out into the carrion vacuum of "Satan's world," we go out trembling, naked and nearly dead. We walk with our heads down, skirting the edges of even the safest spaces. Some of us are still POMI (Physically out mentally in). They are the broken dwellers of a purgatorial nightmare that most don't even know they are living. They believe that each horror they experience is deserved, and someday they will be good enough to return to the murder house they were deemed too dangerous to occupy. Some of them still weep as they quietly sing praises to Jehovah. In reality, they should be singing praises to themselves. Regardless of our distinction upon exit, we are survivors.


We have all endured a uniquely cruel set of atrocities that most people will never understand. They will never understand why you never went to college or why you haven't planned for the future at all. They will never understand your tattoos or piercings or your hair dye. They will never know why you have nightmares about the end of the world or why your children aren't allowed to visit their grandparents, cousins or their own father or mother. They will never understand why all you talk about is how you were in a cult.


No matter how we came, in or how we left, we will always get blank stares and shoulder shrugs from those who were never in; as we try to explain our quarks. There will always be calls from some highly evolved person to "Move on."  They will never understand what it means to see your parents at the grocery store and have them walk past you as if you were stranger. They will never understand what it means to lose your tribe. They can't know that it's more than just people. They won't know that you felt like you were your best self when you were pioneering or serving in that foreign language congregation.


They will never understand how you were able to build a new life, make new friends and find a new tribe.