Expert: Andrew - 11/24/2008

Question
My brother married a JW, had 4 children and committed suicide when they were little.  His ex-wife is still a strong JW but suffers with bi-polar depression, anxiety, etc.  Her son does not practice and was never baptized so his sisters can speak with him, socialize, etc.  Two of the daughters are still practicing.  The other daughter was baptized and fell into drugs, smoking, sex, etc. and was asked to leave which she did.  Apparently, while she still lived nearby, her relatives could not associate with her but I wasn't aware of that too much.

She has not turned her life around (although not perfectly) and considers herself a Christian.  In October she gave birth (out of wedlock) to twin boys.  Her mother and her sisters are begging her to come back to the JW so they can have a relationship with the babies.  She is not going to do that, so the sisters and mother are conflicted and do interesting things like no phone calls but emails are OK.  No one has visited her, came to help her out after the birth, etc.  One of them may have sent money.

This is so hard to understand but what you said in your introduction about family being subordinant to the Watchtower.  A few years ago, the mom wrote a letter to all of us relatives telling us about why she wouldn't be seeing her daughter when she came into the area for a visit.  She explained the whole "shunning" thing, which didn't make anymore sense from her perspective than it does from mine.

One of her daughters is willing to spend time with us even if we do it on a holiday and we can get her son to some, too, since he's not practicing.

Is there anything else we can do?  I think the mom's mental illness is a direct result of the problems she's had over the years with her religion but there isn't anything we cando about that.  

I commend you for having the courage to leave.  We pray for that for these family members but the mom is in her mid 50's, the daughters are in their young adulthood, thoroughly entrenched in their communities.  Even with two members outside the JW spell, they don't seem to be considering any other options.

Answer
Dear Brigid,

I'm sorry that you suffer as a result of Witness policy causing psychological and social contortions in your extended family. After generations of this, it becomes ever so difficult to heal, if not impossible; yet we can always choose a response. An on-target response requires us to (1) understand what is happening, (2) understand their limited ability to hear, (3) navigate the risk that they will misinterpret your good intentions, and (4) stay in touch with our own core values.

> Apparently, while she still lived nearby, her relatives could not
> associate with her but I wasn't aware of that too much.

This is likely because Witnesses consider expulsions among them to be an internal matter, to be kept from public as much as possible because they are aware how bad it is for their public relations. The expelled former member may be complicit in this hush also because, even though the community has disowned them, they do not yet think for themselves, and buy into the assertion that they are bad and wrong and an enemy of God, and the only way to survive God's judgment is to become even more compliant afterward.

> She explained the whole "shunning" thing, which didn't make anymore
> sense from her perspective than it does from mine.

Witnesses have to maintain a very convoluted psyche in order to "make sense" of Witness policy when it contradicts their own human nature and conscience. So they might assume, since they have managed to "make sense" of something (albeit with convolutions they are unaware of having made) then it is also possible to "make sense" of it to others. Their flaw of reasoning is in not realizing that they used a convoluted thought process motivated by social and ideological pressure; and therefore they fail to realize it can never make sense to outsiders who are not subject to that pressure.

I think it is very good news that your niece is unwilling at this point in her life to comply further with the urgings of her Witness relatives to come back into the fold. This means she has a hope of recovering from her Witness experience some day. However, she may not realize that it takes years of sustained effort to recover. If she is suffering from the illusion that "time heals all wounds" she will never recover. Most former Witnesses never do on this account. So one thing you might do is patiently encourage her to work at her recovery process. It really does take years of sustained effort. That is the best hope for her children.

Also, I would be very concerned about contact between your niece's children and the Witness relatives. They currently have a hurdle to jump over which prevents them from seeing the children as often as they might like. That hurdle actually benefits the children; as contact with their Witness relatives will only delay their mother's recovery and injure the children's own fragile psyches in the same way other family members psyches have been injured. So if I were you, I would try to gently influence the niece not to give in to the Witness relatives' manipulations and actually work to increase the hurdle as a protection for the children.

Although family ties are everything; and I never advocate turning one's back on one's family for an ideology; as that is the foolish error that causes so much injury...there are times that children must be protected from injurious people, even when those people are relatives.

> I think the mom's mental illness is a direct result of the problems
> she's had over the years with her religion but there isn't anything
> we can do about that.

What you can do is understand the causes, so that you can help gently and lovingly guide the children when mentoring opportunities arise. Yes, you are exactly right about this "direct result". Mental illness among Witnesses is much higher than in the general population. How could we expect otherwise, considering the evils of policies like shunning, considering the existence of social and ideological pressures that are influential enough to make many former Witnesses compliant even AFTER they themselves have been abandoned by their family and only community?

The two siblings who are no longer under the Witness "spell" as you aptly put it, although they have lost much because the Witness relatives have cut them off socially, now have an opportunity to begin their recovery. There is always hope in that. Help them see the rays of sunlight, for this is a new dawn for them.

Blessings,
AndrewXJW