other christian cult survivors (pref. ones with potentially terminal illnesses, but anyone can respond, just don't tell me to not think about death) how do you think about death without immediately finding yourself desperately crawling back to Christianity because you're afraid you might go to hell when you die??? every time I think about death I find myself panicking about hell.

How I think about it is this: I grew up thinking life was hard. When I had a fever, I didn’t get Tylenol even though Tylenol was readily available and would have helped. No, I drank herbal tinctures and teas, and I suffered, because we were preparing for the apocalypse. When I was talking with my siblings, I wasn’t allowed to joke around with my brothers because I was supposed to practice deferring to them and “building them up” and quite frankly serving them, because I was preparing to be an ultra conservative fundamentalist cult wife.

I spent my life preparing for the next phase of my life, which was always looming, and always worse than the one I was in. But I’m in that next phase now, the one where I expected to be pregnant with my fourth or fifth child, and in an abusive marriage, and trying to stay alive in a post-apocalyptic landscape, and none of those things have happened.

Tylenol is still available.

My girlfriend and I sit and laugh at tiktoks.

Life is not that bad.

Death, I don’t think, will be that bad either. The leaders of my youth were obviously misguided about what my adult life would look like, I imagine it’s entirely plausible that they were misguided about what my afterlife will look like.

I do the best I can with what I have and where I am, now. That’s enough for this life, even though I was told it wouldn’t be. I figure it will be enough for the next, even though they tell me it won’t be. And if it’s not, then god is a tyrant and I won’t have spent this life AND the next being miserable for him, I’ll have taken what good I could.

(source: qvotext on instagram)

It's weird being 18 and graduated because I remember me and my cousins all discussing how we didn't think we'd live long enough to graduate cause the Rapture would happen before then and now we've all graduated and no Apocalypse yet, so now I've gotten old enough to have an undying, fiery rage at my past pastors and every sermon that told me It™️ was coming soon. That was such a terrible thing to teach a child. No child should think they're going to die soon in a world-altering event in which they'll be separated from all their non-christian friends for eternity.

NO BUT FOR REAL!

I remember my pastor had This Thingtm that he always ate his dessert before his actual meal just in case the rapture came. He was constantly talking about how the world will be a disaster after the christians leave and how all of your friends and family that you didn't love to Witness to won't go to hell because of Your selfishness. And it. It just.

Same!!

I remember once overhearing some parents talking about how one of their little kids was found just sitting looking out the window and they asked him what he was doing. He said he was waiting for Jesus to come back. And I remember everybody chuckled and one of the parents said, “that’s a good way to spend your time!”

I don’t know how to emphasize enough that it’s really not.

I overdosed on pills once after being told that it was better to kill myself. Choosing to leave the Jehovah’s Witness cult means God finds you worthy of death. So rather then have God destroy me, my mother said I should kill myself.

But Killing yourself is not the answer. There is a world outside the jw world!

Oh.

Yeah.

I got that too.

Being given over to a reprobate mind for the destruction of the flesh (aka leaving) = suicide is your best option. My parents said this to my face. My dad told me my life on earth would be a fate worse than an eternity of torture.

The scary thing is, I believed them, I just wasn’t ‘brave enough’ to do it.

And OP is totally right!! Discovering a whole new world of possibilities and love, outside the little world I lived in, was what gave me healing and hope and purpose too, and ultimately what saved my life. :)

Epiphany

My youngest is interviewing me about my cult-like upbringing, and to a lesser degree, a similar environment in which I raised her and her sibling.  Now, despite the fact that my kids have been *incredibly* gracious and forgiving of the entire fiasco that was being raised in a scary church, I have regret.  So much regret, so much self-loathing, it’s … honestly, it’s a big factor in my depression and anxiety.  I would do so many things differently, if I could.  

But.

I realized several things, tonight, talking to my twenty-year old Homeland Security major who is writing a huge paper on a (fascinating) Japanese cult-turned-terrorist organization.

In no particular order:

1.  No one – NO ONE, and definitely not me – sets out to fall prey to manipulation themselves and/or raise their kids in an unsafe environment.  Cults, and abusive situations, exist because they don’t look scary at the beginning.  “Let me find a church that will take elements of truth and love and twist them into something unhealthy, and let me stay there for decades and raise my children there,” says no one, ever.  Said me, never.  

No. It happens because it starts with a goal – I have faith and want to express it in community, and raise children who will be spiritually healthy and learn to serve others – and a promise – You can do that here.  

There was nothing *wrong* with wanting those things.  Those were good things to want.  The shame is not in wanting those things.  The shame belongs on the people who promised those things and then subtly exchanged the promise for something altogether different.

2.  So many of the things I did – for better or for worse, and regardless of whether I would choose to do them again – I did for all the right reasons.  Homeschooling, for example.  For our family, homeschooling was an act of defiance against a controlling religious organization that alternately ordered us to be “salt and light” in the public school system (which we rejected, because children are not missionaries, and there’s a reason for separation of church and state) and then ordered us to use “religious education” (based on the homophobic assertion that the possibility of having a gay teacher spelled damnation for our children).  In our own fledgling way, homeschooling our kids was a bold act of defiance against both extremes.  It was my way to attempt to raise critical, independent thinkers.  And while in hindsight, I don’t think I would make the same choice … I’m proud of myself for making the best choice I could.

And I’m damn proud of how my kids turned out:  smart, compassionate, accepting.

3.  Maya Angelou taught us that “when you know better, you do better”.  The church I was raised in?  Condemned the actual church that I raised my kids in for being “too liberal”.  It was relative.  It ended up not being an environment that I could affirm, and wow, I wish we’d managed to get out about ten years before we did (or, honestly, better yet, I wish we’d never hooked up – except for the handful of truly amazing friends I made there).

But.  There’s a relativity to it all.  By raising my kids in that church, I honestly thought I was rejecting the worst of my past and doing so much better.  And then when things started to feel familiar … when we realized the extent of the manipulation … we got out.  

So.  Anyway.  That’s my epiphany, courtesy, as usual, of my spawn.  And sure, I’m now a functional agnostic, twice bitten forever shy of organized religion, but yet still pretty convinced that God gets it, and is cool with it.  

i am trying to pinpoint some moments of awakening. the one that really sticks out is when i found out that a church having a literal interrogation room is a bug, not a feature

kinda messed up how the literal only things you’re allowed to enjoy as a jehovah’s witness are bible study, worship, and ministry work.

It's true; that was forced down my throat all throughout my life before I got out.

Anything that wasn't those three things listed above would be seen as either a waste of time or even "dangerous" in the eyes of the Watchtower. I'm talking hobbies, school, finding a good or better job, etc. It was fucked up.

It was a huge factor in my struggles with my own mental health, because I was being told to love something I hated doing, and if I hated it then there was "something wrong with me", according to the WT. It made me second guess everything I actually loved doing, like drawing, video games, etc. It's a mindfuck.

This concept can be carried to an extreme in some groups/families, and in my case it definitely was. I distinctly remember deciding to ‘play it safe’ and just not enjoy anything else. And now I’m an empty shell of a human being that I’m trying to rebuild from useful scraps of information like ‘hey, going for walks doesn’t suck’ and ‘I don’t think-MAYBE-I don’t think I really am such a big fan of olives.’

That’s how well this concept worked on me. I am a grown adult and I still have no idea what things I like or don’t like because I literally made a point of not noticing, for most of my life.

Someone: YoU wEre sHeLtEreD.

Me: Nah, man, I was isolated.

i think it's probably more common than we talk about for people to have more than one cult experience because as you're trying to get away from one bad situation another takes you in.

i know as kids we were taught to target people who felt like they had been abandoned by other movements (religious or otherwise) and i'm sure that isn't exclusive.

When socializing, if someone seems unwilling to do some activity or favour you want them to do, do what you can to relieve any pressure they may feel to say yes.

Do not use someone’s fear of setting boundaries to get them to agree to something they do not want to do.