NOM

Here's a really good podcast episode.

Terrible, thanks for asking: #33 Witness

This episode features a young woman who was a Jehovah's Witness and had a faith crisis. She decides to not tell anyone other than her mother and "Ghost" out by moving 5 hours away. Her father gets sick and could be saved by a blood transfusion but due to religious teachings won't receive one.

The episode really described the loneliness we feel in our faith crisis due to the inability to be authentic and find validation.

https://www.apmpodcasts.org/ttfa/2018/05/witness/

Thanks for the link. I will go make my day more emotionally painful by listening to it.

That was really powerful. I was also in the middle of a hidden faith crisis when my dad died of cancer. It was horrible. Mormonism didn't kill him in the same way the JW religion did to her father, but my dad had been given numerous blessings of healing (including one by myself), none of which worked. It certainly failed to save his life.

That's not actually fair. If you asked my dad, the church did save him. That's what he would say, and I believe he absolutely meant it. It was a force for good in his life. I wonder if he was scared at the end. Man, I miss him. Damn, you're gonna make me cry at work.

Life is hard.

BriansThoughtMirror wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 16, 2018 12:46 pm

That's not actually fair. If you asked my dad, the church did save him. That's what he would say, and I believe he absolutely meant it. It was a force for good in his life. I wonder if he was scared at the end. Man, I miss him. Damn, you're gonna make me cry at work.

Life is hard.

That's the part I struggle with. I see the good that steers members to goodness but I also see the weird, crazy, toxic side too. I really related to this women who eventually decided to let her father be at peace with his end of life decision and not let her new beliefs interfere with his beliefs.

I'm thinking about reaching out to the podcast host and see if she's interested in doing an episode with 8 guys who have all experienced similar yet different journeys leaving Mormonism.

She really was able to pull out the loneliness experienced firsthand by all of us here.

Red Ryder wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 16, 2018 1:52 pm

She really was able to pull out the loneliness experienced firsthand by all of us here.

No kidding. She nailed it. Especially the conflict between having family at all and actually letting them know you. No one in my family would shun me, but I don't think they really know me anymore, either.

Red Ryder wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 16, 2018 1:52 pm

That's the part I struggle with. I see the good that steers members to goodness but I also see the weird, crazy, toxic side too. I really related to this women who eventually decided to let her father be at peace with his end of life decision and not let her new beliefs interfere with his beliefs.

That's exactly what I felt like... I needed my last time with Dad to be as good as possible. And I wouldn't take it back. There were parts of the whole experience which are sacred to me, though not in a supernatural sort of way, even though it was awful. It would have been very different if I had made a big deal to my dad or other family members of my faith crisis at that time. It did mean I suffered alone, though.

You know what else she nailed? The feeling of suddenly not knowing who you are, and trying to figure that out at a time when your peers are all way past that.

Thanks for posting this. I’ve been very good at journaling at different stages of my life, but the years I went through my faith crisis are almost non-existent and I regret that. Listening to her brought back many of the feelings, thoughts, experiences that I sometimes forget or push away from remembering.

And there may always be a kind of regret about the way to handle speaking with friends and family about a change in beliefs. Fading out or ripping bandaids – I’ve seen it work and fail both ways. The experience we don’t take will always seem better because we don’t know what would have happened and we fantasize the possibilities that might have been.