My Untold Story as a Former Jehovah’s Witness
Religious trauma is real. It’s time we talk about it.
I was born into a family of practicing Jehovah’s Witnesses. I don’t talk about it often. It’s a complex tapestry of people, ideologies, and faith rooted in fear and camouflaged as love (so you can see why it wouldn’t pass as light dinner conversation.) But this piece is not about the Jehovah’s Witnesses as an organization. It’s not about their beliefs being right, or wrong. It’s about my experience, which I’ll share because I’ve learned that shame is silent and incidentally, I’m not sorry.
I simply know that someone, somewhere, needs me to write this.
As a child in elementary school, I was the girl in your class who everyone liked but no one really knew. I was sent to the library to work on other projects while you did Halloween crafts or sang in the Christmas concert. You likely thought it odd, but I made it seem so normal that after some curious questions, you shrugged and looked the other way. Teachers never said a word to me about it, and didn’t scold me when I stood there stoically while everyone else sang the national anthem in assemblies. In those days, I really didn’t mind. It was my normal. I even felt proud.
Jehovah’s Witnesses view speaking out negatively about their organization as grounds…
