Sometimes a story arrives that makes you understand why some people spend decades learning to trust their own perception of reality. Why it takes thirty-two years to finally close a door that should never have been opened in the first place.
When I asked for stories from the ex-JW community, this person responded with something that stirred a deep, familiar ache I’m learning to recognize. Not just because of what they survived, but because of how heartbreakingly common it’s become to hear stories of children utterly failed by the very people who should have been their sanctuary. There’s a profound sadness in realizing how predictable these patterns have become—how often I find myself reading about parents, congregations, and belief systems that claim to cherish family above all else, yet consistently abandon the most vulnerable when protecting them becomes inconvenient.
Their story came with a legend: code names for the people who shaped their trauma: SPERM for the biological father, HEART ATTACK for the mother, NAME for the adoptive father who became their primary abuser. Even in telling their story, they needed distance from the people who caused such devastation.
There’s something both heartbreaking and brilliant about this protective instinct—this ability to create emotional barriers when physical ones weren’t possible. It speaks to the kind of survival intelligence that children develop when the world around them becomes a battlefield, and they must become both soldier and strategist to endure another day.
Born Into Chaos
“Born into the cult. SPERM (biological father) and HEART ATTACK (mother) married and divorced twice in 3 years.”
The foundation of this person’s life was instability wrapped in religious certainty—a contradiction that would shape every relationship they’d ever attempt to build. Their biological father had converted to become a Jehovah’s Witness at age eight, and as a teenager, he brought others into the organization, including the woman who would become this child’s mother and the man who would become their adoptive father and primary abuser.
I can’t help but think about the tragic irony of the biological father’s fate—how he spread his newfound faith like seeds, never knowing he was planting the very system that would eventually exile him and terrorize his child. There’s a cruel irony in the way religious conversion can become both salvation and damnation, depending on which side of the righteousness you find yourself standing.
By age three, the marriage had collapsed twice, the biological father was disfellowshipped, and the adoptive father had married their mother. The adoption papers were signed shortly after a half-sister was born, legally binding this child to a man who would spend the next thirteen years terrorizing them.
But the trauma began even earlier than that.
“First childhood memory is HEART ATTACK (mother) waking NAME (adoptive father) up from bedtime by touching his shoulder. He jumped out of bed grabbed her by the throat grabbed knife off desk and was in the middle of downward thrust when I screamed.”
I read this line over and over, each time feeling something break inside me a little more. Their first memory—the earliest thing their developing mind deemed important enough to hold onto—was watching their adoptive father nearly murder their mother. A child so young they couldn’t yet form complete sentences was already learning that home was not safe, that the adults meant to protect them were capable of lethal violence, and that sometimes a scream was the only thing standing between life and death.
The adoptive father walked out that day and didn’t return until evening. No explanation. No accountability. Just a child left to process what they had witnessed, knowing that tomorrow they would still be trapped in the same house with the same danger. How do you explain to a toddler that what they saw was attempted murder? How do you sleep in a house where love and violence dance so closely together they become indistinguishable?
The Darth Vader Years
In 1978, the family moved to property owned by the biological father’s family. This created a unique form of psychological torture: living surrounded by reminders of a father they barely knew, in a religious community that required them to view that father as spiritually dead.
“SPERM (biological father) was compared to being Darth Vader and me Luke Skywalker most of my preadolescent and adolescent years by both NAME (adoptive father) and HEART ATTACK (mother) but also my blood relatives and the cult members.”
The cruelty of this metaphor takes my breath away. A child being told their biological father is like Darth Vader: the ultimate cinematic representation of a father who chose darkness over his child. But in this twisted version, the “good guys” weren’t the rebels fighting the Empire. They were the community that had driven the father out, the adoptive father who brought violence into their home, the mother who allowed it to continue.
The adults in this child’s life turned their pain into a story—but not the kind of story that heals. Instead, they created a narrative where the child was trapped between a fallen father and righteous guardians, never acknowledging that their “righteousness” was built on brutality.
The first time they remember seeing their biological father, he brought a toy car. A simple gift that triggered a committee meeting with three elders and a visiting circuit overseer to determine whether accepting it was spiritually appropriate. A child’s natural desire to connect with their father became a matter requiring religious tribunal.
I imagine that little toy car sitting there while grown men debated whether love could be accepted from the “wrong” source. How a gift born from paternal affection was dissected like evidence in a trial where the verdict was predetermined. This is the insidious nature of high-control groups: they poison even the most innocent human connections, turning a toy car into evidence of spiritual weakness, a father’s love into a test of loyalty.
Learning to Survive
When the family moved back in 1984 or 1985, the physical abuse from the adoptive father escalated.
“Physically abuse got worse for the next 2 years. Covered up bruises and injuries from school officials but also discovered ability to shut off sensation of pain. Broken teeth finger sprains.”
This passage haunts me in ways I struggle to articulate. The matter-of-fact way they describe learning to dissociate from physical pain, as if developing this survival mechanism was as natural as learning to ride a bike. Covering bruises so the outside world wouldn’t know. Developing the ability to “shut off sensation”—a psychological defense that probably saved their life but came at the cost of learning to disconnect from their own body.
I think about that child, standing in school bathrooms, carefully arranging clothing to hide evidence of what home really looked like. Learning to lie with the kind of sophistication that should never be required of a seven-year-old. Broken teeth. Finger sprains. Injuries that required explanation to school officials who were supposed to be mandated reporters but either didn’t see or didn’t act.
The system failed this child at every level—family, community, school, religion. Everyone who should have intervened instead turned away, leaving a small person to navigate horrors that would break most adults.
At sixteen, something shifted.
“At 16 I threatened NAME (adoptive father) with death if I saw him ever again physically abuse any of my siblings.”
This moment represents something profound—not just teenage rebellion, but the emergence of a protector from within a victim. A trauma survivor recognizing that if they didn’t stand up, their younger siblings would continue to suffer what they had endured. They made themselves a shield, knowing it would likely cost them everything, because watching more children suffer what they had suffered was unbearable.
The courage required for this act hits me hard. To face down the man who had terrorized you for thirteen years and say “no more”—not for yourself, but for others who couldn’t yet find their voice.
The Price of Choosing Freedom
In 1993, they joined the Navy, a decision that led to their disfellowshipping. Military service was forbidden, but for someone who had grown up under authoritarian control, perhaps the structure of military life felt like freedom compared to the psychological prison of their childhood.
I wonder if they found peace in following orders from people who weren’t trying to break them. If there was relief in a hierarchy that was honest about being a hierarchy, instead of calling itself love while wielding power like a weapon.
When their mother had her first heart attack, they went to the hospital. What happened next encapsulates the devastating reality of conditional love within high-control groups:
“Upon seeing me at the doorway she said ‘What the fuck are you doing here’. I left put hole in stairwell concrete block wall.”
A child rushes to their mother’s hospital bedside—because despite everything, love doesn’t die easily—and instead of comfort or connection, they’re met with rejection so harsh it drives them to put their fist through concrete. The rawness of that moment, the way concern transforms into rage when met with cruelty, tells the story of every trauma survivor who keeps hoping the people who hurt them will somehow become the people who heal them.
Twelve years later, at a funeral for a family member who wasn’t in the organization, the scene repeated:
“She repeated the same statement 12 years later at her father’s funeral that wasn’t a cult member.”
Twice. Their mother looked at them—a child she had carried, raised, should have protected—and made them feel like their existence was an offense. That level of rejection doesn’t just hurt. It rewrites your understanding of your own worth, your right to exist, your place in the world.
The consistency of her rejection became its own form of message: You are not wanted. You do not belong. Your presence is offensive.
The 32-Year Journey to Freedom
“I have no connection or contact with any of them anymore took me 32 years to finally close the door to contact.”
Thirty-two years. Let that sink in. Three decades of trying to maintain some thread of connection to people who had made their childhood a war zone. Three decades of hoping, trying, being hurt again and again before finally accepting that some doors need to be closed permanently.
There’s something both tragic and beautiful about the human capacity to keep reaching toward love, even when all evidence suggests it will never be returned. For thirty-two years, this person carried hope like a candle in a hurricane, protecting that small flame of possibility that maybe, someday, their family would choose them.
“Went through every form of emotional mental and physical stress. Live with it daily but after cutting them out recently it seems to be easier to think of them as dead.”
This line breaks me open every time I read it. Not because it’s harsh, but because it represents the kind of grief that has no name—mourning people who are still alive but were never really there for you. When people prove repeatedly that contact with them causes trauma, when they cannot or will not change, sometimes the only healing path is to grieve them as if they’ve died.
Because in a very real way, the people who might have loved you, who should have loved you, never actually existed. You’re not mourning who they were—you’re mourning who they could have been, should have been, who you needed them to be.
The Strength That Remains
What strikes me most about this story is not the catalog of horrors this person endured—though they are staggering—but the profound resilience that carried them through each moment of choice. The decision to protect their siblings. The decision to show care when their mother had a medical emergency, even knowing they’d likely have it thrown back in their face. The decision to keep trying for thirty-two years. And finally, the decision to stop trying and choose themselves.
Each of these choices required a different kind of courage. The courage to fight. The courage to love despite being unloved. The courage to hope despite repeated disappointment. And ultimately, the courage to let go. They kept a door open for three decades, waiting for people who would never walk through it.
This isn’t failure. This is wisdom earned through unimaginable pain. This is someone who spent thirty-two years learning the difference between love and loyalty, between family and biology, between hope and delusion.
To the person who shared this story: Your journey amazes me. Not just what you survived, but how you survived it. How you protected others when no one protected you. How you kept trying when trying only brought pain. How you finally learned to protect yourself when no one else would.
Your childhood should have been filled with safety and love. Your teenage years should have been about discovering who you were, not defending who you had a right to be. Your early adulthood should have been about building your own life, not healing from the destruction of your earliest years.
None of this should have happened to you. And yet, you’re here. You survived. You learned to distinguish between the people who claimed to love you and the people who actually did. You spent thirty-two years trying to believe in a version of family that didn’t exist, and then you found the strength to stop trying.
Your story matters because it shows that healing doesn’t always look like reconciliation. Sometimes healing looks like finally admitting that some people aren’t capable of the love you need, and choosing to find that love elsewhere. Sometimes healing means understanding that you can’t save people who don’t want to be saved—including family members.
Thank you for trusting me with something so profound and painful. Thank you for surviving all of it. Thank you for choosing yourself when no one else would.
To anyone reading this who sees their own story reflected here: You are not alone in this particular kind of grief. The grief of losing family members who are still alive. The grief of accepting that the love you needed was never available from the people who should have provided it. The grief of choosing your own healing over maintaining relationships that only bring harm.
Family dysfunction, religious trauma, childhood abuse—these experiences can make you feel like you’re living in a different reality from everyone else. Like your pain is too complicated, too ugly, too much to share. But stories like this one prove that survival is possible. That healing is possible. That choosing yourself over toxic loyalty isn’t selfish—it’s necessary.
If you’re still trapped, know that escape is possible. If you’ve escaped but are still trying to maintain connections that hurt you, know that it’s okay to close those doors. If you’ve already closed them and are grieving, know that your grief is real and valid and necessary.
Sometimes the most radical act of self-preservation is admitting that the people who were supposed to protect you became the ones you needed protection from. And sometimes the greatest act of love is loving yourself enough to walk away from people who refuse to see your worth.
You are not responsible for healing people who hurt you. You are not obligated to keep doors open for people who repeatedly choose to bring harm into your life. You are allowed to choose peace over chaos, healing over hope, yourself over anyone who refuses to see your value.
Your story matters. Your healing matters. Your choice to survive, to thrive, to finally put yourself first—it all matters.