Avocado
Permabanned
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2013
- Messages
- 3,794
- MBTI Type
- ENFP
- Enneagram
- 7w6
- Instinctual Variant
- sp/so
I never did get her to take the test since she thought all people are individuals and can't be put in boxes. She was an even more devout Jehovah's Witness than my mother, as while my ESTJ 1w2 Sx/Sp mother sometimes bends the rules of the organization for practical purposes and doesn't seem to practice what she preaches, my grandmother was pious to a fault and shunned my mother for 5 years once when she caught her daughter breaking a church rule (I forgot what it was). My grandmother was really big on church rules and gave the silent treatment for years at a time if she caught anybody breaking even a minor rule, which included my less devout, but still really devout mother. Until I was 14, I was just as devout as my Grandmother, then it struck me how illogical some of the bible stories were and also how unlikely it was that the church had the one true interpretation of the book. This opened the door for me to apply moral judgements to the religion and I judged the organization as a mind control cult that was worse than even mainstream christianity because it had tight control over its members, discouraged learning about even other forms of christianity (much less nonchristian religions), and promoted shunning. I left, and kept it secret from my grandmother for sometime. I would blame my absence on my mother's corruption if my grandmother asked (she considered my mother very corrupt because she caught her breaking a rule). Regardless, my mother eventually came to a place where my grandmother and I were eating and blurted out that I was an atheist, and my grandmother forgot she was pretending her daughter did not exist and asked me if that were true. I said yes, but our relationship did not end. She continued shunning my mother over a minor violation, but did not shun me despite a major violation. My grandmother was always concerned about helpless people and animals and was very generous. She was more altruistic than I am. She disliked theoretical discussions and when I wanted to share an exciting new concept or idea I had, she would always ask why I would want to talk about things that aren't even real, when we could just enjoy what was right there and talk about realistic day-to-day things. My grandmother was also a social butterfly and far more extroverted than I am. She maintained networks of friends so larged and complex that I lost count of how many people considered her their "best friend". There were easily a couple hundred people at her funeral. She was always very meticulous about everything being in order. She was also a painter in her youth before arthritis pruned up her hands, and she would paint horses and things she saw. She was not as ambitious or commanding as my mom, but she was influential when it came to soft power.