My name is Julie Devors and I was born in 1964 in Illinois. Creatively, my login name is JULIE, haha. I am the oldest of three kids; I have two younger brothers, Mike who is two years younger than me and Johnny who is eight years younger. I would say that my life until age eight was relatively normal. I was very close to my dad’s parents, having my own room at grandma and papa’s house and even living with them for a short time as a baby. My mom told me she thought I waited to walk until she left on a trip ;) when I was staying with grandma and Papa. I’m sure that’s true :) . My mom was Catholic, her whole family was and she even attended Catholic school when she was younger. My dad was pretty non-religious. My mom was a stay at home mom and my dad was a cop. We were pretty much a boring, typical, middle class family living in a Chicago suburb. However, the year I turned eight everything in my little world changed dramatically. That is the year papa died unexpectedly, my mom at the urging of her sister (a devout jw) decided to become a Jehovah's Witness, my grandma had to move in with us and my little brother was born. We began attending the Brookfield congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses. That was the year we quit celebrating anything (of course). I remember a feeble attempt by my dad to put up the tree in the living room by himself that first (non) Christmas, and watching him from the doorway of the kitchen, knowing mom would be mad if I went in there to help him or took any delight in it. He never put up another tree.
Grandma lived with us for three or four years until she passed away also. She really liked me, didn’t get along too well with my younger brothers or mom. I spent a lot of time with her in the addition we had built onto our house, even moved down there after she died. I think that was the beginning of me feeling kind of separate from the rest of the family. It was great to have my own room and bathroom, don’t get me wrong! lol, but I’ve never felt I was as connected to my family as I should have been, and looking back I can see there were patterns that started very young and were reinforced as I was growing up. I’m convinced some of it started with my closeness to grandma and papa and them showing more favoritism towards me.
So, the next six years were spent in the typical jw kid fashion... attending WAY too many meetings, going out in service (our new fun on the weekends) preparing for meetings and service, less vacations and more assemblies, being terrorized by the paradise book pictures and the knowledge that all my little friends were going to die unless I was able to somehow convince them to become jws (all good little jws first foray into the world of codependent thoughts), feeling like an outcast at school, sitting in the hallway outside the classroom door while the other kids partied with Valentine’s cookies and Christmas cupcakes.
My few attempts at rebellion all ended pretty badly with me trying to sneak onto a sports team and my parents inevitably finding out and mom going ballistic and me having to quit. There was never any talk of what I wanted to be when I grew up, no hopes and dreams for the future other than the new system. My mom completely immersed herself in the jw lifestyle. My dad was able to keep neutral about it, letting her do whatever she wanted with us kids, but never participating himself. He did make one rule, she could not go out in service in the town we lived in, just neighboring towns, because he was embarrassed. That actually worked out GREAT for us because the dread of knocking on a door and having someone you know answer it was diminished. I would say that during this period I was quite introverted and shy. I had few friends, a couple at school and a few at the hall (they attended a different school, there were no other jws at my own school other than me and my brother). I didn’t participate in any extracurricular activities in elementary of junior high, except the few unsuccessful attempts to sneak onto the track and soccer teams that ended disastrously ;) and basically spent my time dubbing (being a jw).
The next turning point in my life happened when I was 14. My dad hurt his back and had to basically retire from the police department. My mom had been pestering him about studying, but I think he had too many friends in the area and was too embarrassed to become a jw, plus he wouldn’t have been allowed to be a cop and carry a gun. After grandma died and he couldn’t sit in a police car all day because of his back anymore, I think my mom looked at it as the perfect opportunity to move and get dad to be a jw. So, we went to Arkansas. I was sure they wouldn’t have shoes or TV there and I wasn’t far off in my guesses, but it turned out to be a good move in a lot of ways. As shy as I was, I never tried to sneak onto any more sports teams or care too much about school in Chicago. But, by moving I was forced to meet new people and the school was much smaller and a lot further behind than the school in Chicago. So, Mike and I ended up looking like real brainers ;) My dad tried his hand at a variety of odd jobs, photographer being one. He taught me how to develop film, take pictures, etc. So, I did some work on the yearbook and the newspaper in school. It was the first thing I’d ever participated in and I loved it. I was forced out of my shell. I made friends at school and other than the (ab) normal jw exclusion stuff, felt pretty happy the last couple years of high school. After I graduated (I recently learned) that my brother Mike did ALL KINDS of cool school activities, the little rebel!
I got baptized just after we moved to Arkansas and mom always wanted us to auxiliary pioneer during our vacations. I think we usually avoided it but I remember a few miserable spring and summer breaks in there.... nothing else too eventful happened until I met a jw boy at an assembly at the beginning of 11th grade. He attended a nearby hall and even though we weren’t allowed to date, we saw each other at “functions” like square dances (yeehaw) and assemblies. By 12th grade we’d decided to get married, although we waited until I turned 18 (didn’t want to be too young, har). So, just about as soon as we got married we started skipping meetings, switching around halls we were attending, never going out in service. Both our families weren’t too happy about all that and we soon started trying to avoid them too. I had been working since 11th grade and continued to work full time as did my husband. We moved around a few times and decided to build a house. We were doing a lot of the work ourselves, I got pregnant with our first child, everything seemed to be going pretty well, still managing to avoid getting in trouble for ditching most of the meetings and remaining in good standing ;) Two months after our first child, Tyler, was born our house was hit by a tornado and destroyed. We weren’t home, good thing, several of our neighbors were killed. At that time, Bill Clinton was the governor and he came and toured the area where the tornado hit. I think that freaked us out a little more than we were able to admit at that time (not Bill, the tornado). Our project together, the house, was gone as was most of our stuff. It was hard to start over and we ended up moving around a lot, my husband switched jobs many times, I was able to be a little more stable with my work, but we soon drifted apart. I realize now that we were obviously much too young to have gotten married, we never even dated like normal people. It was our answer to getting out of the house and away from the jws. He was very into fixing up cars and “playing” and I seemed to always be working, dealing with the responsibilities of the house and the kids, and by this time I’d had our second child Beth.
After five years of marriage, and without getting into ALL the details, it was no longer a safe place for me and the kids to remain with my husband. He was gone nearly every weekend racing or partying, there were unsafe people in and out of the house, it was just turning into a really bad situation. At this same time, my brother Mike got disfellowshipped for ?? some crock of shit the elders cooked up. There was apparently some beer drinking going on at some of the quick build kingdom halls being built around the state. My brother had attended several of these quick builds, and although it was ELDERS supplying beer to these younger brothers, the elders in the Yellville congregation decided it was somehow all Mike’s fault and disfellowshipped him. I thought this was pretty much bullshit and since I wasn’t attending meetings anyway, I invited him to live with me ;) seemed logical. He only stayed a short time before finding his own place. However, when it was time for me to move and get divorced, I called Mike and asked him to help me pack up one weekend when my husband was gone and get the hell out of there. So he did. My parents were NOT happy, not only because I was dishonoring the family and the jws by getting a divorce, but I was also TALKING to Mike. My mom paid me a visit and was furious that I wouldn’t stop talking to Mike because he was disfellowshipped.
I moved into a lovely (ok, I'm really exaggerating here) trailer park with the kids. I had a car that barely ran, was working a full time job yet had no money, my parents were mad at me, taking care of two babies and I was divorcing my husband. It sucked. So, to make matters worse, the elders showed up. I didn’t want to talk to them at that point, so I went out onto the back steps as five of them poured out of one car, and said, “I don’t want to talk to you, just do whatever you’re going to do.” and I went back into the house. NOW, I don’t claim to have the best memory in the world, but I don’t ever recall any of them calling me and I KNOW I never had a meeting with any of them, but I do remember my dad telling me that they’d announced I was disfellowshipped. Even though he was a jw, there were times he was only sporadically attending. Mike and I have always assumed I got disfellowshipped because I talked to him. And that’s the assumption I’ve been living with now for 14 years. Mike told me that shortly after he and I were disfellowshipped, many of the elders from that congregation were removed and a bunch of new elders were brought in. I don’t know why.
After I was disfellowshipped and divorced, I got pretty freaked out about my situation. To make a long story short, I hooked up with a non jw guy, we moved to Wyoming, we got married, I got pregnant and had Cory, my youngest son, my second husband turned out to be a mean person and a lot worse than my first and I was quite unprepared to deal with that. (Talk about jumping from the frying pan into the fire, whew!) We were divorced a year later. Really, I don’t think I should have to count this marriage, can’t we just FORGET about it?? After that nightmare, I decided to go to college. I took classes at the local community college and worked part time. I had completely lost touch with my first husband who moved to a different state and remarried immediately after we divorced. I really hated Wyoming, I was very poor and overworking myself by going to school full time, working part time, taking care of three kids under six years old, etc.... and it was frickin’ cold there, I hated the climate. I started dating a man who was offered a transfer to Oregon and he asked me to go with him. I don’t think he thought I’d say yes, but I jumped on it! I wanted OUT of Wyoming.
After moving to Oregon, I found a job within a couple months and started working full time again. I had planned on going to school, but I think the cost of living here surprised us both and he was unprepared for a big new family. We broke up shortly after I moved out here. All this time I had not heard anything from my parents... they were being the good jws and shunning me.
I have been in Oregon now for ten years. I have not gotten remarried and have been working at the same company since I moved here. About six years ago I built a house in this same town we have been living in, the kids have gone to the same schools this whole time also. It was important to me to put down roots and finally have some stability in my life. I spent five years in counseling (off and on), individual and a women’s group, which helped me IMMENSELY. I know some ex jws have a problem with “therapy” but it was very helpful for me. There is a lot of codependency (and worse) taught to us while growing up as jws, and it’s not easy to overcome these big issues without some help. I have had some really good friends throughout this time, but mostly I spend my time with my kids and working of course. The older they get, the more fun we have. I think we’re a pretty normal family, we love to go camping, watch movies, travel and we all snowboard, the kids are in all kinds of school sports and activities and they all go to EVERY dance, haha. They have big plans for their futures: Tyler a pilot in the Air Force, Beth a veterinarian, and Cory a doctor... or professional soccer player ;) I never remember having dreams about what I would be and I am soooo glad to be raising my children so differently from the way I was raised.
I made one trip back to Arkansas when the kids were little. My brother’s wife made a plan with my parents to meet us at a park and visit with the kids for an afternoon. It was an uncomfortable visit, but they did show up. A few years after that I did a search and found my dad’s email address online. To my surprise when I wrote him he wrote me back and we started a kind of superficial type correspondence... nothing too deep but at least we were in touch. I found out they were planning a trip to the west coast. I invited him and my mom and my youngest brother, still all jws of course, to visit, as long as they were coming all the way out west coast anyway, sure that they would turn me down. Again much to my surprise they accepted and came to visit me and the kids for one evening. Other than periodic emails to my dad (he usually writes me a little something back when I write him) these are the only two times I have seen my parents in fourteen years. They never call or write the kids. They live seven miles from my brother, and it’s been that long that they haven’t spoken or written a word to him either, and they have never even met his children... seven miles.
Just this year I met the MOST WONDERFUL man, another ex jw ;) and I believe that right now is without a doubt the happiest time of my life. The kids are all doing great, I think they are awesome people and I just really enjoy being around them, and he does too, they all get along very well. My brother Mike and I have recently been keeping in touch with each other a lot more and he even came down to New Orleans to spend my birthday with me just this August... it meant a lot to me. My boyfriend planned this wonderful surprise for me, it was incredible. He is such a thoughtful, caring person. His family is chock full of jws (on the downside *wink wink*), and they’ve of course been asking him why I got disfellowshipped. This actually got me to thinking, and I decided to be brave and write my dad and ask him if he knew for sure if it was for talking to Mike. After all these years of shunning, never knowing my kids, shunning Mike and never even meeting his kids, my dad’s revealing response was, “I don’t really know.” He said it might have been because I divorced my first husband, but he really wasn’t sure. He blamed it on us probably having a wrong attitude. Brilliant! He doesn’t even know why he’s been shunning us all these years. I wrote him back and, among other things, told him it was a little scary that he didn’t even know why he was doing it and it reminded me of those people who drink poisonous kool-aid just because they are told to do it. Needless to say, haven’t heard from dad again, oh well. This was our first discussion about anything jw related in all these years and they totally think everything would be ok if Mike and I would just come back. I let him know that was an impossibility.
To me, a person's spirituality is a personal thing. I'm definitely soured on any type of religion, but I am also envious of those people who can go to church, have a belief and associate with others who believe like they do. They can often find comfort in a situation that I can only feel sad about. I sometimes try to imagine what it would be like to have a faith or believe in a god, but it feels like if I have to try that hard, it's not real... like I'd only be pretending and faking it and that's not something I want to ever do in my life again. Spent too much time pretending and being a faker when I was a jw. I think everyone has a right to believe however they want, I just wish they'd keep it to themselves ;) and not feel like everyone else had to believe EXACLTY like they do. I do know many people who are a certain religion or believe a certain spiritual path, yet do not feel any need to recruit others into their belief system, and I find them to be extraordinary, wonderful people who I think are the best example of what all believers could be like.
I found Tishie’s discussion board not long after she had started it. I was so happy to meet other exjws, but I never expected to get so much out of it. I can remember the day my parents came to visit me, I was sitting in my office typing on Tishie’s board, terrified of seeing my parents, literally feeling like I was going to die, and everyone was SO nice and supportive, telling me, I CAN DO IT!! It was a huge comfort to me that day (and many others!) to know there were people out there who really understood what I felt. I have been so fortunate to meet a lot of really wonderful people, both online and in person. I’ve done a lot of healing through this board and I’m so glad Randy and Rap decided to take on the responsibility. I am reminded constantly of the strength we all have within us to overcome our situations and be better people... and to treat people better than we have been treated. I have innumerable differences with the jws, from the ridiculous blood stance, to the way they treat their children, but one of my biggest problems with them is their shunning policy. I am proud to realize that all the thousands of hours my parents have spent in service, the handful of people they’ve been able to convince to become jws, is COMPLETELY outweighed by the number of people who I have turned away from ever becoming jws... my own three children of course who never want anything to do with becoming a jw, to my bosses and coworkers who have come to know the kind of person I am and have watched me live my life over the past ten years, raising my children and being just shocked that my parents won’t have anything to do with us just because I don’t want to be their religion, to my neighbors and friends who have known me for all these years and cannot believe the way my parents behave... their BAD example is a worse witness than they can imagine and I have shown literally hundreds of people the true nature of the jws by exposing their shunning policy to everyone who gets to know me and my family. My parents may be proud of dragging in their handful of converts, but that cannot begin to compare with the number that their behavior has convinced to NEVER become jws.
Even though I am a moderator on this board, I'm not a very good one, I keep forgetting my mod login name... not that we do much anyway, nobody's been preaching much or posting porn ;-) That's ok, I like calling Randy and asking him, "who am I again?" But, I have a lot of gratitude for this board just being here and available so I want to feel like I am doing something to keep it going. For those of you who read this, my good friends from this board that I’ve known for so many years, I know and you know there are big chunks left out of this narrative, some things I feel are too personal to splay out in this fashion but that I have shared with you through the thick and thin of our lives. I look foward to spending more time with you wonderful people and meeting many more of you. My email addy is vip@townandcountrychevy.com.
Love, Julie
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