My Life As A Jehovah S Witness

Petting Tigers is not a gritty, edgy "trauma memoir." Nor is it a shocking expose of a corrupt religious sect. It is the story of what can happen when a child's dreams are stolen, and the agonizing experience of watching as one's own light is snuffed out. It's about having one's mind washed away and replaced with hypnotic rote beliefs that are self-destructive and make no sense in the real world.Petting Tigers is a story about overcoming huge obstacles when you think you have no resources, internal or external to do so - and about reclaiming your life when everything around you tells you that it's too late. Petting Tigers is about imagining and achieving a way out and the slow, clumsy steps that inevitably follow a rebirth.

At nineteen, Jillian Webster knows she can no longer live her life crippled in fear. As a baptized Jehovah's Witness, she understands leaving the religion will have great consequences. Shunned and labeled as evil, she will also be forbidden to see or speak to her mother, stepfather, and younger siblings ever again. But Jillian is a dreamer; for years she has craved the sort of life prohibited as a Witness. She longs for higher education, big cities, adventure, and world travel. More than anything, she years to be free, to follow that persistent whisper in her heart that begs her to go out into the world and find the life of her dreams, a life she has been told since childhood-doesn't exist . After years of heartache, she walks away from the Jehovah's Witnesses, losing her family forever. Forging ahead with nothing but her backpack, Jillian sets out on a global journey across Europe, Africa, Southeast Asia and Australia in search of the life she risked all for. However, she soon learns the world is not what she imagined and finds herself more lost in her travels than found. Devastated, she continues to follow her heart, leading her to discover everything she's ever dreamed of in the most unexpected place. Follow Jillian's deeply vulnerable yet liberating journey as she struggles to conquer the fears that bind her as well as the questions that plague her at night. How do you know when to hold on and fight, and when to let go? How do you find the strength to forgive those who have hurt you the most? And above all, how do you keep your faith when everything seems hopeless? Scared to Life is the true story of one woman's choice to follow her heart above all else, find life after loss, and ultimately, discover her freedom by letting go.

You must always, always tell the truth, no matter the consequences, for you must model yourself on Jehovah, and Jehovah does not lie. This is the most crucial rule of all, Joy Castro is told as a young girl in a Jehovahs Witness family. Joy is 12 years old when her divorced mother marries a brother in the church. He is highly respected in the community, having displayed the ultimate sign of spiritual devotion: he served at Bethel, the Watchtower headquarters in Brooklyn. At home, however, he is a despicable brute. For the two years her mother is married to him, Joy does not grow at all; in fact, she loses 16 pounds, an eloquent testimony to the physical, emotional, psychological, and sexual abuse she suffers at his hands. Her battered mother does nothing to protect her, nor does her church. She is sustained by a consuming fascination for horses and books and her protective love for her younger brother. Their daring escape from this unspeakable cruelty, to discover a nurturing home with their father, is the key to their survival and salvation.

I invite you to come with me on a journey-a journey through life. In your passage through life, you want to be fully in charge of the route, the events, and the destination. As we travel, you need a clear view of where you have come from, where we are today and where you will be going. I believe I have a sincere story to present to you, my life as a Jehovah’s Witness: “Used Abused and Forgotten.” In my story there are many events that have adversely affected me as I grew up. I speak of the wrongs I have suffered, and of those who inflicted them; the memories of painful experiences and harmful early influences and unpleasant past events. Together we will consider the importance of what happens when one’s life is decimated by control in the name of religion.

"À la Tara Westover's Educated, Scorah's pensive, ultimately liberating memoir chronicles her formative years as a Jehovah's Witness...and captures the bewilderment of belief and the bliss of self-discovery."--O, The Oprah Magazine, Named one of "The Best Books by Women of Summer 2019" "Scorah's book, the bravery of which cannot be overstated, is an earnest one, fueled by a plucky humor and a can-do spirit that endears. Her tale, though an exploration of extremity, is highly readable and warm."--The New York Times Book Review A riveting memoir of losing faith and finding freedom while a covert missionary in one of the world's most restrictive countries. A third-generation Jehovah's Witness, Amber Scorah had devoted her life to sounding God's warning of impending Armageddon. She volunteered to take the message to China, where the preaching she did was illegal and could result in her expulsion or worse. Here, she had some distance from her community for the first time. Immersion in a foreign language and culture--and a whole new way of thinking--turned her world upside down, and eventually led her to lose all that she had been sure was true. As a proselytizer in Shanghai, using fake names and secret codes to evade the authorities' notice, Scorah discreetly looked for targets in public parks and stores. To support herself, she found work at a Chinese language learning podcast, hiding her real purpose from her coworkers. Now with a creative outlet, getting to know worldly people for the first time, she began to understand that there were other ways of seeing the world and living a fulfilling life. When one of these relationships became an "escape hatch," Scorah's loss of faith culminated in her own personal apocalypse, the only kind of ending possible for a Jehovah's Witness. Shunned by family and friends as an apostate, Scorah was alone in Shanghai and thrown into a world she had only known from the periphery--with no education or support system. A coming of age story of a woman already in her thirties, this unforgettable memoir examines what it's like to start one's life over again with an entirely new identity. It follows Scorah to New York City, where a personal tragedy forces her to look for new ways to find meaning in the absence of religion. With compelling, spare prose, Leaving the Witness traces the bittersweet process of starting over, when everything one's life was built around is gone.

A stand-up comedian who was brought up as a Jehovah's Witness describes how her childhood was haunted by perpetual doomsday prophecies about an imminent apocalypse in which her non-believing neighbors and schoolmates were doomed.

Reproduction of the original: The Finished Mystery by Charles Taze Russell

I invite you to come with me on a journey-a journey through life. In your passage through life, you want to be fully in charge of the route, the events, and the destination. As we travel, you need a clear view of where you have come from, where we are today and where you will be going. I believe I have a sincere story to present to you, my life as a Jehovah's Witness: "Used Abused and Forgotten." In my story there are many events that have adversely affected me as I grew up. I speak of the wrongs I have suffered, and of those who inflicted them; the memories of painful experiences and harmful early influences and unpleasant past events. Together we will consider the importance of what happens when one's life is decimated by control in the name of religion.