Recognizable questions
- Do you recognize the feeling that you made a choice, yet can still feel sad about what you are leaving behind?
- Have you ever noticed that you can feel both relief and loss when a familiar phase of life changes?
- Do you recognize the loss of friendships, family ties, or a daily routine as weighing more heavily than you first thought?
- Have you ever noticed that your old beliefs no longer fit, but that certain memories or habits still remain dear to you?
- Do you recognize the tension between stepping away from something and still grieving the community or identity that went with it?
- Recognizable questions Why am I sad even though I left of my own accord? Why do I miss people and habits even though I no longer believe the same way? Can you grieve a faith or community? Why do people outside Jehovah’s Witnesses sometimes have trouble understanding this? And can you also grieve when you still believe, but your place within the community changes?
When you leave Jehovah’s Witnesses, a lot more can change than just what you believe. You may lose friends, family contact, a familiar worldview, daily structure, expectations for the future, and a community. For some people, that also touches their identity: who am I if I am no longer a Jehovah’s Witness?
Not everyone experiences leaving in the same way. Some feel mainly relief and build a new life relatively quickly. Others experience a deep sense of loss. And many people feel different emotions at the same time.
You may have decided to leave yourself and still grieve what you are leaving behind. Those two things do not contradict each other.
What can you lose?
Friendships: contacts that may have existed for decades.
Family contact: relationships with parents, children, brothers, sisters, or other relatives may change or disappear.
Identity: when “being a Jehovah’s Witness” was part of who you are for years, a change in faith can also raise questions about yourself.
Structure: meetings, field service, personal study, and other activities gave a fixed weekly rhythm.
Meaning: you may have had clear answers to questions about life, death, and the future.
Community: a social world in which many people shared the same language, beliefs, and customs.
View of the future: perhaps for years you believed you would see your loved ones again in paradise or that you would live forever on earth.
That last point in particular can easily be underestimated. You may not only lose people or contacts, but also a future you were convinced for years would come.
Why do others sometimes not understand it?
Someone without a similar religious background may say: “But you wanted to leave, didn’t you?”
That sounds logical, but a voluntary choice does not exclude grief. Think of a divorce. Someone may decide to end a relationship and at the same time grieve the person, the family, the familiarity, and the future they once envisioned.
A similar thing can happen with a change in faith. You may no longer stand behind certain beliefs and at the same time long for the people, rituals, certainty, or sense of belonging that were tied to them.
Leaving and missing can exist side by side.
What can this grief look like?
Grief does not follow one fixed pattern. The familiar model of different stages of grief is sometimes used to describe experiences, but people do not necessarily go through those stages in a fixed order.
For example, you may experience:
sorrow about people you see less often or no longer see;
relief and guilt at the same time;
anger at yourself, others, or the organization;
nostalgia for certain periods;
uncertainty about who you are;
missing certainty or meaning;
loneliness;
confusion because good and painful memories exist side by side.
Maybe on Monday you think: I’m glad I can make my own choices, and on Tuesday you suddenly miss a convention, a relative, or a conversation after the meeting.
That does not make your feelings contradictory. People can experience freedom and loss at the same time.
You are also allowed to miss the good things
When you’ve had negative experiences, you can get the feeling that you’re only allowed to look back on your past in a negative way. But maybe you also have good memories.
Maybe you loved singing at a convention. Maybe you had good friends. Maybe field service was sometimes pleasant. Maybe your faith gave you genuine hope. Maybe you felt supported by the congregation when you were going through a hard time.
Those memories don’t become false because your beliefs later changed.
You don’t have to choose between ‘everything was good’ and ‘everything was bad.’
A period of life can contain both.
Active Jehovah’s Witnesses can grieve too
Grief around religion doesn’t only happen to people who leave. Maybe you’re still a Jehovah’s Witness, but someone you love has left. Maybe your partner has come to believe differently. Maybe your child is no longer a JW. Or maybe you’re doubting yourself and noticing that the world that was always taken for granted is starting to change.
That, too, can bring sorrow.
For an active JW, it can feel as though he is losing someone spiritually. For the person who leaves, it can feel as though they are losing their family socially.
Both people can grieve the same relationship, but from a completely different perspective.
Understanding that can be important when JWs and ex-JWs try to understand each other.
How long can grief last?
There is no fixed timeframe for that. How someone responds depends, among other things, on what has changed, which relationships have remained, how much support they have, and how important their religious identity was.
So don’t compare yourself too quickly with someone who says: ‘I was over it after a few months.’ Your situation may be completely different.
But the reverse is also true: you don’t have to tell yourself that recovery will necessarily take years because you were a Jehovah’s Witness for a long time. Everyone processes change differently.
What can help?
There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Some people mainly need recognition. Others need contact with peers who’ve gone through the same thing, new social connections, or professional support.
It can help to specifically look into what you’re actually grieving for:
Do I miss my faith?
Do I miss Jehovah?
Do I miss certain people?
Do I miss my former identity?
Do I miss certainty?
Do I miss the view of the future I once believed in?
Or do I mainly miss belonging somewhere?
That distinction can matter, because not every loss needs the same answer.
In closing
Grieving a faith does not automatically mean you want to go back. It also does not automatically mean that leaving was the right or wrong choice for you.
Maybe through grieving you discover that you still stand by your decision. Maybe you begin to re-examine certain beliefs. Maybe your faith in God remains, but your relationship with the organization changes. Maybe you eventually decide to return.
The sorrow does not determine the conclusion.
It mainly tells you that something or someone was important to you and that something has changed or been lost.
Whether you are a Jehovah’s Witness, are doubting, or have left the organization: loss deserves space without anyone deciding for you what that loss should mean.
You can miss something without wanting to return to it. You can step away from something and still have loved it. And you can grieve a world that is no longer yours while you are still discovering what your life looks like after that.
