Hi everyone. A few years ago I made this blog post in a very, very different head space. This may(???) be the most reblogged post I’ve made on here, and I wish I could delete it b/c it blew up and has become such a visible post in the Jehovah’s Witnesses tag (for some reason Tumblr won’t allow me to delete my own post tho <3). I now recognize that this post is full of dishonest language and doesn’t accurately depict the JW organization.

I was born and raised in the organization. I learned to minimize any cult-y JW policies by saying the stuff in that blog post like “JWs don’t just shun people” and “JWs are not against blood alternatives” and “JWs believe in equal rights.” If you’ve got time to kill, please check out the “How Would You Answer?” articles on the JW online library, because they basically teach JWs how to respond to non-JWs with language that preserves JW beliefs but also protects the image of the org in the public eye. All the things I said in the “JW Facts” post sounded nice and weren’t *technically* wrong, but it wasn’t really honest either. I thought I was being a good JW by using this PR-language on social media, and it is effective at pacifying people that have no prior experience with the organization. But anyone that has been associated with the org can see it’s full of hot air.

When you grow up in a certain culture you accept your circumstances as normal. JW life was my normal. I knew nothing else. So when people told me I was in a cult I thought - I’m normal! I’m reasonable. I have love towards others. These people just don’t have the facts about JWs. I’ll fix that by making a blog post full of nice-sounding-PR-speak to set the record straight.

It took some time, but I now realize that bending the facts and using careful wording to give off the appearance of a more welcoming, open organization isn’t benefitting anyone. People deserve to know about the organization for what it really is - not a whitewashed image. There shouldn’t be a need to spin the facts or have a separate way of speaking for public and internal dialogue. Here are the facts: JWs practice disfellowshipping which is shunning and family are not an exception, JWs have a hardline no-blood stance 100% of the time, LGBT is 100% wrong and there is no support system for them, and JWs regularly pressure very young, impressionable people to get baptized (which is like a contract with the JW org you can never ever get out of…fun).

Growing up I had quite a few school friends that said to me that I was so normal and friendly despite being a JW. Again, I thought that I was setting the record straight and showing people the REAL truth about the org by my conduct at school. It turns out that I had it completely backwards. My school friends thought I was normal because I don’t act like JWs are supposed to. I have always been on the fringes of the org b/c of my interest in school and friendships with “worldly” people. I have always valued critical thought and logic. My mental journey to waking up was a give-in, but I wasn’t there yet when I wrote this blog post. I guess I was still trying to convince myself that my personal views and the views of the org weren’t incompatible. Obviously they were, but sometimes it’s easier to tell yourself lies than confront the truth.