Figured I would kick this community off by sharing my story.
I was "raised in the truth", both my parents having converted before I was born. My parents also homeschooled me, meaning I watched TV all day every day and was socially isolated. This was in the 90s before homeschooling was as common as it is now.
I remember constantly going in service as a child. My parents would often hand me off to pioneers with a packed lunch and I would spend all day in service without them. Knowing how many JWs are pedophiles I'm thankful nobody took advantage of my parent's trust.
We would go to other congregations for my dad to give public talks almost every Sunday. My dad was an MS and spent a ton of time working for the congregation for free.
Everything changed when I became a teenager. An Elder physically assaulted my dad, then bad mouthed him to everyone so my dad lost all his privileges. What happened was we moved to another congregation, and this Elder didn't send the letter recommending my dad that the Elder body agreed on and sent his own letter instead. Because of this I also wasn't allowed to get baptized.
My dad always took out his anger on me and my mom but now it became much worse. I was subjected to constant screaming until the day I finally moved out of my parent's house. His favorite topic was the house being "messy". He would fixate on one thing until I finally cleaned it, then he would just move on to something else to scream at me about. Eventually I gave up trying to do anything.
We moved again to a congregation where I had no friends, and we lived in the middle of nowhere. My mom didn't drive and I didn't go to school so I spent all day every day doing nothing during my teenage years.
My mom forced me to get baptized at 15. By this point I didn't believe in it but I wasn't given a choice. After getting baptized the love bombing kicked in. Going to the meetings and in service was better than being at home so I went all the time once I got my driver's license. I also brought my sisters and they eventually got baptized too because of me.
JWs made me feel special so I gave them my all. Pioneering, working at hall projects, and at 20 I was appointed an MS. I also moved into my own apartment when I was 18. I was constantly doing stuff and I got totally burned out. My typical day would be going in service or a hall project, then going to work, then writing any talks I had to do, going to bed around 2am and waking up at 7am to do it all again. It got to the point where I couldn't handle it and had to stop Pioneering and eventually couldn't be an MS either.
At 23 I married a woman who ended up being quite toxic, but so was I back then. She developed health problems. But instead of getting empathy and support we were always judged.We worked hard to do more within JWs. Eventually my wife started Auxiliary Pioneering and was approved for regular pioneering. Then something pretty strange happened.
The Service Overseer (I'll call him Dick) lived with his wife and mother. His mother hit my wife with her car in service. It really hurt my wife and she had to go to the doctor. I suggested to Dick that she shouldn't be driving since she was very old and he didn't care at all. She also went around telling everyone that my wife was a liar. I asked her to apologize to my wife and she refused.
Then we had a miscarriage, and had to put our cat to sleep. It was a rough time so we asked for a shepherding visit. Instead of helping us the Elders sat us down and told us that my wife wasn't allowed to pioneer any more and wouldn't give us a reason for the sudden change. I can only assume that Dick was offended by my wife's pain. All of this lead to my wife attempting suicide.
In spite of all of that, we moved to a different congregation and tried to keep being good JWs for years. I tried again to talk to the Elders about what Dick did and nobody cared.
What finally broke my faith was a fucking podcast about history. They were listing off various dates and one was Jerusalem getting sacked by Babylon in 587 BCE. I laughed because I knew they got it wrong, one of the absolute core doctrines of JWs is that it happened in 607 BCE. So I looked on Wikipedia and that was wrong too. I checked history books and they were all wrong. That's when it hit me, JWs were wrong about this. What else were they wrong about?
My curiosity led me to a copy of Crisis of Conscience, after reading it I realized I couldn't be a JW any more. Eventually I realized the Bible also had a lot of problems in it and the entire concept of a god is flawed and became an atheist. Then the pandemic hit. 2020 was not a good year for me.
I tried to fade out of JWs for a year but I'm not good at not speaking my mind and regularly shared what I was learning with my family. I knew I was going to get shunned so I wrote a letter to all of them and hand delivered it. If you want to know what I wrote I read it in this video: https://youtu.be/LryZo16TYio
I also disassociated from JWs but they rejected my letter. Technically I'm still listed as an inactive JW, which is hilarious to me. They're that desperate to keep membership numbers up.
Life after JWs has been hard work. I've been trying to learn the social norms that regular people learn in their teenage years. But I wouldn't trade my freedom for anything. I have a good career now and I'm getting divorced. Leaving JWs is by far the most difficult thing I have ever done but it has been very worth it.
Absolutely. I've been working really hard to improve my health both mentally and physically. I'm down 75 lbs. I'm trying to be the best version of myself.