Marie-Soleil Read: Nothing Prepares You to be Erased

I wasn’t raised in this faith [Jehovah’s Witnesses]. I chose it as a teenager, at a time in my life when I was searching for meaning, for love, for something to hold on to. I was fifteen, maybe sixteen, when I encountered Jehovah’s Witnesses [a high-control religious group that believes it is the only true faith]. Their world seemed pure, reassuring, full of hope.

I gave myself to it completely, believing I had finally found my place. For years, I followed the rules with sincerity and devotion. I silenced my desires, my doubts, my inner impulses. I built a life based on an ideal I thought was right. I wore the mask of faith to be loved, to avoid rejection, to protect the ones I cared about. But that mask began to suffocate me.

When I became a mother, a deep conflict started to rise within me. Through the eyes of my children, I saw the contradictions I had tried so hard to hide. In trying to pass on the faith, I was also passing on fear, control, and self-denial.

And still, it took me eleven years to act. Eleven years of silencing my doubts, burying my pain, playing a role I could no longer embody. I was afraid—afraid of losing everything. Afraid of being rejected by the people I loved the most. Afraid of being alone, unanchored, unloved. That fear paralyzed me, consumed me, kept me trapped.

When I finally made the decision to leave, the prophecy fulfilled itself: my community erased me from their lives. My mother, my longtime friends, turned their backs on me. They condemned me to silence, as if burying someone they never wanted to see again.

That pain still lingers. Nothing prepares you to be erased by your own.