Tell me---We all have regrets about being in the organisation,what's yours?

what is/are your regrets? do u wish that you'd have pursued something or dealt differently with a situation?

Hello MSg20 good to hear from you!

Regrets? Oh yes, plenty. I was a sister for 21 years. Brought up 4 sons in the "truth". Gave the best years of my young womanhood to pioneering and bringing up my children in obedience to the Org.(BIG regret). Didn't get an education nor encouraged my sons to get one (frowned upon). Worked menial cleaning jobs and lived under deep stress and constant guilt. Never felt as if I was doing enough, never felt worthy, never, ever felt good enough. 

When you allow yourself to be controlled and manouvered in every aspect of your life,you end up never growing up. You remain a child, afraid to make informed adult choices on the important things incase you displease your "parent", the Society.

Thankfully, at the age of 42 I left, and I can honestly say that I've grown up more in the last 4 years than I ever did in the previous 21.

"But then again, too few to mention."

Walking from a business back in 1988 because I wanted to pioneer.

Stopped going to school

the list goes on

What are your regrets MSgg20?

Luckily never sacrificed anything important to the org. Went to college, had worldly friends, did it my way.

What I regret is the enormous waste of time in past, present and future. And the impossibility to tell my "brothers and sisters" and even my family what I really think.

Tons - but I don't dwell on them much these days.

• Turned down business opportunities and promotions [several] in order to pioneer, be spiritual, etc.
• Did not learn critical thinking and skepticism until I was 50 - missed lots of opportunities to understand our species and our REAL history until later in life
• Made tons of 'friends' who were assholes in the end
• Was convinced that Biblical Christianity was the 'truth' [and the JW version particularly]. If not for religion being shoved down my throat, blocking all other visibility - I would have long ago known it was all delusion and who knows what direction I would have gone

But I am a happy, satisfied, atheist now. So all is well that ends well I suppose.

Jeff

Most regrets are minor things that are easily overlooked but I think the one main one was that I didn't go to college.  Even in high school, I knew what I would be if I could have gone to college and tried to figure a way to do it, despite not being able to go.  But the particular field I was interested in required 4 years of school and then internship.  As a JW, and with JW parents that crushed any ideas of higher education, it was a dream that I would never attain.  To this day, I sometimes wonder where I would have been had I been able to pursue that career instead of settling for what I became.  But even still, it's not been bad and I deal with it as it is.

I took my children in there, believing it was the best future I could give them. The org takes away all family tradiitons and unity that would be linked to Xmas and Birthdays etc, as well as placing itself ahead of family loyalty.  Once you throw a bad marriage into that mix it's even more lethal

The losses and  have been shocking. Regrets? Too many to list.

Loz x

Venetian,i have regrets. I put the friends over my own family esp my own mother because she wasn't in the truth...i all but abandoned everybody else in my life...But you know what, my biggest regret is forgetting how to think!

@Lwt..Violent Femms??

Missing out on college............... but if I had gone I wouldn't have met my wife when I pioneered where the need was great.  We both left together in our young 20's and built a grand life for ourselves. It took a while to become financially secure and reasonably successful. She's become more successful and is now a well known artist. If i'm lucky I'll be a footnote. But I did manage to figure out how to invest and we retired from the real working world at 60. So all in all it turned out to be a good trade off. Of course back then in the 1960's JW'S were a lot more relaxed then it is now....at least that was my recollection. Probably because I was very independent in my thinking, reasoning, social life and interests. I wouldn't have been able to handle the stuff most of you had to deal with. If my wife stayed in I would have turned into a Jehovah's Bystander. A witness who would just stand around and not get involved.

Regrets?  Um no, being that I was a born-in there wasn't much I could do as a child.  I'm glad I never got baptized and was able to extract myseHenlund f the org when I was a young adult.  No regrets about that.

Heck, some days I regret being born into it.

I was born in....... didn't get a collge education... or going into millitary service... instead of field service, which by the way I remember being told repeatedly, that know one would ever regret ... wasting your youth in Jehovah's Watchtower service...

Some of the things I've said to people regarding their faith...or their certain fate...

I regret that I never really have had a dream, of my own ... That my lifes ben on hold for nothing....

tate

Being "born in" throws a monkey wrench in the works, huh?

Yep, being born into that crap is my only regret.  I do regret that I let my mind be held captive and walked around for 10 years thinking I was dead.  I'm not dead yet!  That's always a plus.

I regret that I never really have had a dream, of my own ... That my lifes ben on hold for nothing....

I can't tell you how much I can relate to this right here.   I have no goals, no dreams, no aspirations, and to be honest since approaching my mid 30's after being born into this mess, I don't even know where to begin. Don't know what I like, don't know what I might like, and at times am misanthropic enough that I feel too cynical to even care.  It's really a messed up thing to be born into something like this and to have all of your ambitions, whatever talents, aspirations, and dreams having already been decided as to how to view and use them.

I regret not making real friends when I had the chance.

I regret not pursuing activities I enjoyed, especially when I was in college.

I regret not following my curious instincts sooner, it would have saved me years of internal turmoil.

On really bad days I regret being basically forced to marry at a young age, but other days she's the only thing I'm thankful for.

I regret exposing my children to the Borg, and I sincerely hope that they never go back.

Listening to a religious leader who said-  'If you have greater love for father, mother, brothers and sisters than me you are not worthy of me'.