by
Joy Castro
There were problematic things in my particular situation growing up, aside from issues of blood transfusion, which were not necessarily related to our religion. I realized my family was different beginning when I went to preschool in England. I was three years old then, and my understanding of the difference between me and other students just continued to grow as I continued on in school.
There were particular activities that I was not permitted by my mother to take part in, such as birthdays for the other children. If someone brought birthday cake or cupcakes, I was not allowed to partake. If the children made decorations for different holidays I did not celebrate, I would go sit in the hall or another room away from the class. Jehovah's Witnesses at that time and I believe still, did not celebrate Christmas or birthdays, Halloween or Easter. There were numerous occasions during the year when other children would hold celebrations and I would not participate.
When we returned to the United States, I was six years old. I attended first grade in the U.S., and of course, then there was the Pledge of Allegiance. Since Jehovah's Witnesses don't pledge their allegiance to any nation, sitting still and silent in my chair was a daily reminder of the fact that I was different.
In my particular household, we prayed at least twice a day, attended "meetings" (which is what we called church services) at the Kingdom Hall or at the home of another member three times a week: two hours on Sunday, one hour on Tuesday evening and two hours on Thursday evening. Each of these meetings required a certain amount of preparation, so we would read texts published by the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society in advance. Participation, in my experience, simply meant that when the brother, or the man in charge, would ask the pre-printed questions in the text, one of us would volunteer to answer. As much time as possible was spent going door-to-door preaching or 'out in service,' sharing principles of the Jehovah's Witness faith with other people, whom we called 'worldly people,' with the intention of saving, helping and converting them.
Because I was doing this from an extremely early age, it just seemed normal. I thought it was right; I thought it was for God. I was a believer, I think the way almost anyone born into a religion is a believer. But I was also kind of shy and didn't really enjoy going up to the doors of perfect strangers and knocking and telling them stuff I was trained to tell them. There's a lot of preparation and coaching for that. The Jehovah's Witnesses have what they call a Theocratic Ministry School, and they give practice presentations so that people of all ages can learn how to present materials at the doors of worldly people. I had been trained in that from the age of five. It was uncomfortable, but I thought I was doing a kind thing for worldly people.
I ran away from home at 14 years old and continued to go to the Kingdom Hall on my own for about a year afterwards. I had started to have questions about the belief system starting at about 11 or 12, and when I finally did run away, I was able to pursue those questions more vigorously. For me, the religion just didn't hold up logically, and it didn't feel like a compassionate religion. And so at 15 years old, I ceased going. I had been expected to become baptized, which is what Jehovah's Witnesses encourage children to do when they are at the age of reason. For most, this is during the early teens, and that had been the expectation for me, but I quit before I went through baptism.
When I was a younger child, my mother was certainly aware I had questions, because I asked some of them of her. I think I was a frustrating child for her in some ways because of that. During the period when I was 12 to 14 years old, she was remarried to an extremely abusive man, so the three of us - my mother, brother and I - were basically in survival mode, and my questioning was pretty dormant. But before that, I had bothered her with questions about various beliefs we held.
My parents had been divorced for two years at that point, and my father had been disfellowshipped by the religion, which is comparable to being excommunicated. He was expelled for smoking cigarettes, and when my mother remarried, we were forbidden to see him at all, and that was represented to us by our new stepfather, a Jehovah's Witness, as being based in scripture. I had not seen my real father for over a year, and so when I ran away, I ran away to his house, which was an hour away in West Virginia. He was worldly and disfellowshipped, which meant he was considered an 'apostate.' An apostate is one who has known Jehovah and the 'true faith' and who has turned their back. It was really quite heretical for me to go to my father's home.
My brother is five years younger than me and was the biological child of my father and mother. Our mother, for reasons that I do not know or understand, was not a particularly attentive mother, and my brother was a particularly curious child. So, he would get into trouble physically and put himself in risky situations. I was worried about him and tried hard to protect him and keep him from danger. We lived in a very remote rural area, so I was concerned about the fact that if one of us was badly injured, it would take an hour or more to get to the hospital, and blood transfusions were not an option for us because of our faith. But, having been raised that way, I did believe that was morally right. It was just a chronic, low-grade fear - just something in the back of my mind.
I've heard of instances where parents refuse their children certain treatments based on the faith, such as the case of the sextuplets born in Vancouver, Canada. I'm relieved for the sake of the children that the state stepped in to allow the blood transfusions. There are many religious systems around the world that feel it's okay to physically damage children in the name of God or faith, and that's a concern for me. Children don't have autonomy yet; they can't speak their choice, and the parents are making it for them. Of course, I understand that parents make most choices for their children, but when we see a parent abusing a child or starving a child, we intervene. I think it's appropriate and humane for us to do that.
However, if children have already been given blood transfusions, I believe that most Jehovah's Witnesses are compassionate and kind enough to not hold that against the children. It was not an act of the children's will either way. If the children grow up to be Jehovah's Witnesses, presumably they'll be treated well in a warm and friendly environment.
I formed a lot of insights about hypocrisy growing up. I learned that sometimes the idea of love is absent in religion, that systems of belief can have logical inconsistencies and that people are perfectly willing to be hypocritical when it serves their needs. I learned that someone who holds a position of religious and moral authority isn't necessarily a good person. It was surprising to me as a young person that violence could be employed in the name of God and of love.
That happened in my family. My mother's husband was physically violent with her, my brother and me to a severe extent, in the name of the faith. He quoted scripture and made sure we got to every meeting, but he was also emotionally, physically and sexually abusive, and he ritually underfed us; I ran away because I feared being raped by him. (Not long after I left home, he was arrested, convicted, and imprisoned for molesting a nine-year-old girl.) I don't blame the Jehovah's Witnesses for my experience. Abusers can exist in any kind of organization. Most of the Witnesses I knew were kind, gentle people who meant well and whom I liked and respected.
For me, the source of strength and hope in my life has always been connected to love of people and treating them compassionately. Today, I meditate and pray, though I do not belong to an organized religious structure. I'd be one of those spiritual, not religious box-checkers. I studied religion in college, trying to get an objective handle on it. I'm interested in the essences of world religions, and I try to live by the Golden Rule of treating others with as much love and respect as you want to be treated.
I think my mother felt very betrayed that I ran away and that I would choose to leave her religion. We did try over the years, sporadically and with good intentions, to have some kind of relationship. But then we'd go through long fallow periods where it was too difficult for one or both of us to communicate. At this point, after the publication of my piece in the New York Times Magazine [3]
and the subsequent publication of my book, she does not communicate with me at all. She's now a nurse and hospital administrator specializing in 'bloodless options,' which are alternatives to blood transfusions. I don't have a clear sense of what those medical options are, but I think they have to do with plasma. I could be wrong.
My brother and I are very close. About six months after I ran away, we were able to have him removed by the police from my mother and stepfather because of my testimony. He went to the Kingdom Hall with me for a little while and then stopped when I stopped. He is now not a member of an organized religion and is a happy, productive working adult with a family.
I've moved on, too. Writing a book that allowed me to process, re-live and deal with it all has made it less painful to talk about now. Writing a memoir is cathartic and puts some kind of order into the chaos of a life. But the scars don't just disappear. Because of the violence in my childhood, I struggled for years with symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I've been helped with that by some great therapists.
But it's also been lonely. If you grow up very abnormally and then decide to join mainstream society, there are just all kinds of gaps and absences, and you have to go back and fill in a lifetime of feeling odd, strange, outcast, excluded, et cetera. Jehovah's Witnesses are very socially exclusive in that they hang out mostly with each other. That was my whole social life growing up, and when I left, I left behind the only friends I had, the only social norms I knew.
Growing up in such an isolated, exclusive way damaged my social skills as a kid, which is probably why I became an academic. (laughs) You feel very alone in the world, and then when you join that world, you don't necessarily have the skills to integrate. And then there's the pain of losing family. I miss my mother. I know she meant well and was motivated by love, but she loved her religion more than she loved me and my brother. That's painful. It's a very demanding faith system.
When Jehovah's Witnesses approach me now, I tell them I'm an apostate, and that ends the conversation quickly. I don't know if it's a polite way to end the conversation, but it's certainly effective.
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Born in Miami, raised in England and West Virginia, and educated in Texas, Joy Castro is the award-winning author of the memoir The Truth Book
