First of all, welcome to hidho and butterfly! I know how you feel about finally finding a forum you can really identify with! That's how I felt when I joined a weeks ago. I haven't told all of my story yet either, but I'm sure the right time will come. Meanwhile, it's already been such a big help reading others' experiences, thoughts and feelings and being able to relate and share common ideas. It helps you work out what you really feel inside, and confirms all the doubts and suspicions you've had about JWs.

I'd like to say that I've always been a kind of thinker, but obviously when it came to JWs I didn't for a while there...until I ran into some problems in the congregation which made me start questioning and even standing up to an elder and CO, and seeing their and everyone's negative reaction made me start to realize that something wasn't the way it should be - or at least how I thought it should be. Even so, I hung in there some years and began to fade, getting more and more doubts along the way.

Then I also began thinking about things outside the JW organization, reading all kinds of books and generally broadening my horizons on all kinds of topics, which helped me see that there was MUCH more to life than JW and their literature. This also helped a great deal towards working out what I really think, feel and believe - not what the Org had told me I think, feel and believe!

Even so, it can take a long time to get it all together and reach a point when you know you can't be a JW any longer, and I'm currently in that situation of no longer believing any JWs teachings, but not disassociated or disfellowshipped - yet. The only thing keeping me in touch with them is a few old friends whom I'd hate to lose, but that's the price of freedom from JWs, isn't it! I'm hoping I can maybe just fade even more until everyone forgets me.