A quick message for all my ex-cult peeps and PIMOs :
This is not the end of the world, I know the media is acting like it and I know how whatever cult / religion you’ve come from or are currently in will be influencing this shocking event for their own gain, but its not the end.
This is not some precursor to a deity committing mass genocide, this is not a divine judgement, this is not a sign from above telling you to come back to the cult.
These are the actions of a mortal human, this is an attack by someone of our own species, this is not the first time it has happened and I doubt it will be the last.
So take 5 minutes to breathe and calm yourself, if you need to, stay off social media or avoid posts concerning the Ukraine + russian conflict, put yourself first and look after your mental health.
If you are in Ukraine, I know words are meaningless especially online but I hope you see this from a safe place, I hope you have enough to get by and I hope you aren’t in any physical pain. If you’re grieving or are scared out of your mind, I’m sorry for your loss and for what you’re going through, I wish I could hug you and support you as much as possible in person.
i have this overwhelming sense that i have a major trauma in my past. i spent a lot of my childhood wishing something bad would happen to me so that i could justify these feelings. and even now, i know it’s the cult, i still feel like it’s not bad enough. my trauma isn’t enough.
but not only that, i feel like i can’t blame the cult. the idea that it is good and right and that there’s no other way is so ingrained in me, that even though i know it’s wrong and traumatic and stole 16+ years of my life, i still can’t quite rationalize my feelings and responses to it.
it’s like someone told you after almost two decades of life that the sky isn’t blue, it’s been green all along, and all the facts point to that being true, and you know rationally that it is, and you know you’ve been lied to your whole life. you know the sky is green, but if someone asked you, you would still automatically say that the sky is blue.
(the sky is actually blue. not trying to trigger anything in anyone.)
for the record a cult isnt just any religion or ideology or person you dont like. a cult is intentional sustained abuse and keeping people isolated from others, often coupled with like financial abuse. go look up the Mormons and scientology for some ideology based cults that are real. go look up the BITE model and that 10 step thing and like. for fucks sake stop throwing serious shit around its not funny and yall are actually making shit worse
yall are sounding like the “being trans is a cult” fucks amd im about to lose my shit
baffling how some mormons call themselves Lgbt+ allies and then donate 10% of their income to the church. Don’t you realize where that money is going? don’t you realize who you’re sponsoring? what they’re doing? don’t you realize what your church does to gay and trans people?
At the memorial the lady to my left was someone who I had never met before, but she was near my age. She was really nice, and let me read along with her and use her songbook. While in a vacuum this was a wholesome interaction, in reality I was hoping to get away with texting my friends the whole time and I was VERY annoyed that I had to engage beyond passing around Jesus’ very strange skin.
I swear the memorial talk was even worse this year. 45 minutes of the same shit as every other year and the last 15 is dedicated to convincing you to do ‘do more’ for some guy name Jehobo or whatever
Being raised as a witness, I often felt that as a female I was completely at the whim of the men in my life. They had all power over me, my earthly masters so to speak. This caused a lot of trouble for me, a stubborn girl who didn’t quite understand the differences between females and males other than our inherent biology. In my early teens I began my first romantic relationship, with a boy outside the org. I remember having a hard time ever allowing myself to disagree with him, for fear that if I did he wouldn’t respect me, or that it was a bad thing. Eventually I told him this and gave him the background details he’d need to understand, since he was never raised religious. I’ll never forget the feeling of validation when he told me that thinking was backwards, and that I am allowed to express my emotions and opinions as I feel like. Years later I’m still with this person, and through him I have grown into a stubborn, outspoken woman who says how she feels regardless of if it’s agreeable. It took a man allowing me to feel powerful and like I had authority to actually become that, and I’ll always be grateful to him for helping me get out of that backwards mindset.
One of the hardest obstacles I have faced after leaving the cult is death. The deaths of those I love, and my own inevitable ending. How do you cope with being raised to believe you will be given salvation and see your passed loved ones again, only to realize that the whole religion being fed to you is… wrong? How can you even begin to come to terms with your own mortality at that point, or get over the now more permanent losses you’ve faced?
It was a struggle to find some way to accept this, and in many ways I still haven’t. But that’s okay I think, because I don’t know what will happen once I die. It may not be nothingness, I may indeed still see whom I have lost again and have purpose anew in a future existence- it’s just completely unknown to me. Ignorance may be the only comfort. Because we’re all equally in the dark.
It has taken a lot of time for me to comprehend just how exactly the org has been able to indoctrinate so many. When I first left, I always wondered how anyone who lived a normal life could ever be roped into a life of repression and worship. It has taken me hitting my lowest points to really ‘get it’.
The org has perfected its tactics to prey on emotionally vulnerable people. It goes beyond giving a grieving person hope of seeing their loved one again in paradise. It’s sending witnesses to under developed nations to witness to the impoverished and uneducated people who may be desperate to have a hope for paradise, for a future where things are good and just. It’s telling stories to those in hard times how Jehovah answered their prayers, and if you put your faith on him he’ll give you his divine help.
I miss my hopes for paradise. I don’t miss the cult itself, but I miss my ignorance. As I still grieve my mom and go through the stress of having crippling anxiety attacks daily, I wish I could cast my burdens on Jehovah. But I can’t, and I know that. If I hadn’t already known that JWs are a cult though… I probably could have been persuaded.
Jehovah’s Witnesses and other cults prey on the vulnerable and emotionally taxed. It’s pathetic if you really think about it.
Thinking about the fact that most everyone in my family was in an MLM and a religious cult at the same time for a while… Bro that’s practically two cults, pick a struggle.
Being a child of ‘unfortunate circumstances’ while being a witness was one of the most isolating experiences for me before I left. My dad was disfellowshipped, my mom was never a baptized witness and they were both on heroin for a while. This was never a secret to anyone in the congregation.
Despite me not living with them and instead being in the care of my grandparents, it still seemed that people would keep me at a distance. Not entirely by any means, there were a few people that were closer to my family and understood the situation more, but anyone not in our inner circle was much more skeptical of me. I was often not invited to social gatherings that the other kids were having, and really only talked to my peers at the big get-togethers. At meetings I spent most of my time talking to the elderly people sitting in the back room, and they treated me kindly. But that’s not a replacement for socialization with your peers.
The one family that didn’t reject me and actually let me stay at their house for a few days, ended up mostly leaving the cult. So… that says something.
Growing up, my grandparents taught me that Adam and Eve carried every gene and that that’s how all variations of humans came to be.
Now, I’m a middle school dropout who genuinely still doesn’t know how evolution works. But in retrospection, that claim sounds impossible and kinda fucking dumb.
Jehovah Christmas- a funny (and hypocritical) family tradition.
Now, I’d like to stress that no, we do not call this event ‘Jehovah Christmas’. While I think suggesting that name would get my sister to laugh- I doubt any of the devout family would be happy about it. Instead it is boringly called ‘The November Party’ but I want to suggest a different name.
This family tradition came about last year, before we locked down fully for COVID. It’s a two day event- one day for gifts, the next for food. With that in mind, it’s more of a Christmas / Thanksgiving combo than a unique tradition.
On the first day, the third Friday of every November, we each (8 of us total) get each other a gift, nothing extravagant but there is no hard price limit. We keep gift bags labeled with our names on a big table, and we all just put our gifts in the bags after wrapped. We all open them, taking turns taking a single gift out of your bag. The following day, my dad and grandma cook a big Thanksgiving-like spread. And then, for the one time a year we do this- we eat together at the big table.
This tradition was obviously born out of a desire to celebrate holidays without really celebrating them. I can’t remember who’s idea it was, though I can assure you it wasn’t mine. While I see the obvious hypocrisy here, I’m not going to bring that up and dash away the chance for my sister to experience that little bit of the holidays. Plus, I love it and wish they had done it when I was a kid.
Anyways, if you and your families had any fun traditions like that, please share them because I’d love to hear.
Growing up in a doomsday cult muddled much of my ability to be emotional about the tragic things happening in the world. Growing up with the belief that everyone who died unfairly would either be resurrected or they weren’t deserving of life anyways makes taking in horrible things a lot easier- it makes it simple to think about, and it sounds on the surface like everyone will receive justice.
But even if resurrected with the memories of the pain erased, those people still lived through injustice that a loving god wouldn’t have put them through. They also aren’t being resurrected yet, so they haven’t gotten their justice yet anyways. But that thought process brings so much comfort- this idea that the universe has a system to sort everything out in a way that is sensible to human comprehension. That isn’t how the world is, though- people suffer everywhere and being complacent with that fact is to close your eyes to reality before you.
I think this realization is what can cause many ex-doomsday cult members emotional distress and exhaustion, because once you realize the unfairness of the world there is no going back to ignorance.
Your cult aesthetic looks like dark cloaks and goblets of virgin blood. My cult reality looked like modest dresses and indoctrination training.
Please don’t forget the real cults that are under the radar and remain mostly unchecked in our society to this very day. Please don’t forget how many people spend years of their lives being abused and misled by these cults.
