Sarah Smith’s Path to Healing

Hey me,

I think it’s my turn to talk about my time as a Jehovah’s Witness. Maybe the reason I haven’t really done that yet is because I know what consequences it could have for me…

Leaving the community meant losing everyone and everything I knew. I wasn’t allowed to be in contact with family or friends anymore. This apparently isn’t being reinforced as much as it used to be, but I left at a time when it was quite strict.

Talking about Jehovah’s Witnesses now and how I view what I learned at the time could make me an “apostate”.

The thing is, I am not really against Jehovah’s Witnesses. If it hadn’t been for them, I would have probably given up a long time ago. It gave me hope that there is at least a God who loved me and that he would make sure that there would come a time when I would be able to live without pain. That was actually kind of nice. It also gave me rules and structure that were good for me as long as I was part of the community.

The funny thing is… I feel like now that I live my life as I want to and how I have designed it myself, I am the best version of a Jehovah’s Witness that I have ever been. I will admit that I am doing things like tarot card reading, astrology, and watching fantasy. If I were to ever want to be a Jehovah’s Witness, I would have to give those things up, and honestly, I don’t want to. I love fantasy movies way too much to be able to not watch them anymore.

But that’s the thing… I have become someone who knows their limits now and won’t push past them anymore.

What’s interesting is that now that I have found my own way, I feel like I understand the teachings differently. Now that I am not a Jehovah’s Witness anymore and have decided to live a life that goes against what they teach, I have started to believe the things I learned about the Bible more, but in a different way.

I was taught about a paradise. I was taught that there will be a time when the world will be in great distress and God cannot ignore the suffering any longer because, if he did, then people wouldn’t survive. I was taught that Jesus would descend from the heavens and fight for us so that we have a chance to live in a paradise without suffering, where lions and zebras would live side by side without killing each other. That people who had died would be resurrected and would be able to live a life without the memories of the past.

I can honestly say I do still believe that in a way, but differently. I have learned through my journey that healing erases the memories. Not in a “suppress it” kind of way, but in an “I haven’t thought about it or felt it in so long that I don’t really recall it anymore” kind of way. If someone were to ask me to describe my life right now, I would tell them that I am living in a paradise. Not because my life is without flaw or because my surroundings are all flowers and butterflies. I would tell them that I live in a paradise because I am not scared of my surroundings anymore. I see the beauty that this world has to offer. I see the potential that my life has. I see the potential that I have. I see the positivity that I have learned to exude.

The funny thing about it is that my old selves had to die so that I could become this version. I still have negative experiences, but they don’t dictate my behaviour anymore. I also had to walk this path because my suffering was so bad that I had no other choice than to heal and create my own paradise.

If this is the pattern for healing, then I guess the world will be forced into healing at some point, because we either die or heal. We already see it happening in some parts of the world. For me, the best example is South Korea. Women have started the 4B movement, and marriage as well as birth rates are declining. But I don’t want to get political. It isn’t about that… What I want to say is that I feel like maybe there is a chance that the Bible is right… but the person saving us isn’t God or Jesus, but us…

I feel like maybe I should go through what I have learned and see how I view those things now through the lens of healing, spirituality, and religion.

I am just realising that, based on this, there might really not be a wrong or right way of doing things. In the end, we’re all just trying to do the best we can with the knowledge and understanding we have.

I wasn’t wrong for believing those things, I wasn’t wrong for leaving those beliefs behind, and I wasn’t wrong for returning to them in my own way.

It also shows that we never know how a negative situation could impact us positively in the future.

Thanks to that time as a Jehovah’s Witness, I was allowed to learn things that some people may never even hear of in their lifetime. It also helped me understand complex concepts because I already had an understanding of them in a way.

I am so glad that I learned not to shame myself for things, because even if they harmed me, I was allowed to grow because of them.

I was allowed to become me because of them.

So thank you for doing the wrong things!

Lots of love

Me