When my sister returned to The Truth many years ago, my favorite grandma was ticked. She’s now dead, but when alive, Grams would have considered herself to be a front-row Baptist. When my sister went back to our childhood religion -- the Witnesses -- Grams said, “I don’t know why she wants to get mixed up with that cult!”

A few weeks ago, I found myself thinking about my grandmother’s comment while sitting in the audience at the annual conference of A Common Bond. That’s the group devoted to homosexual ex-Witnesses, and the lead speaker was J. Todd Ormsbee, a sociology professor from San Jose State. Don’t ask me what the J. stands for, because I forgot to ask him. He’s a brainiac from Brigham Young University, via the state of Utah, and he says lots of brilliant things you’ve never thought of and uses words like counter-hegemony. Yeah I know, I had to look that up myself.

Last year, I was finishing the final edit of my book and began to doubt some of what I had written about my childhood in The Truth.  That's normal, I think, to have doubts about the accuracy of your memories, especially when you're about to launch them for the rest of the world to read.  I began wishing that I had kept more of my old Witness publications for documentation because I thought my story would sound bitter if I didn't substantiate what I wrote.

Not once in my adult life have I ever felt saddened by my lack of childhood birthday presents.  Not once.  Worldly people who didn't grow up in The Truth have the hardest time understanding that and imagine that I must feel a tremendous amount of anguish over missing out on birthday cakes.  Their take on things is usually, "Oh how sad!  How terrible it would be to not have birthday or Christmas celebrations!"

The Jehovah's Witnesses offered this conclusion when they published the Youth Book in 1976. I was twelve and I believed every word they wrote.