I Made Comics Showing What It Was Like To Be A Teenage Jehovah’s Witness

Disclaimer: Jehovah’s Witnesses aren’t a monolith, and neither are teens. Families vary, congregations vary, and personal boundaries vary. These comics (and this article) reflect a very specific kind of “inside the bubble” adolescenceequal parts sincere, stressful, funny, and confusing. My goal isn’t to dunk on anyone’s faith. It’s to translate a lived experience that’s hard to explain unless you’ve had to whisper, “No thanks, I don’t celebrate that,” while a classroom stares at you like you just admitted you’re allergic to happiness.

If you’ve ever wondered why some kids sit out holiday parties, skip the birthday cupcakes, or politely decline the Pledge of Allegiance without trying to start a debate clubwelcome. Pull up a chair. (Just… not during the school Christmas assembly. We’ll be in the hallway.)

Why I Turned My Teen Years Into Comics

Teenage life is already a lot: social hierarchies, hormones, homework, and the occasional existential crisis at 2 a.m. Add a high-control schedule of meetings, preaching expectations, and constant “be different from the world” messaging, and you get a daily reality that’s… comic-book-ready.

Comics let me show what plain words struggle to capture: the awkward pauses, the mental gymnastics, the tiny joys, the sudden guilt spirals, the careful language, and the way your whole body tenses when a teacher says, “Everyone bring valentines for the class!” It’s not that I didn’t want to be kind. It’s that I was trained to treat certain celebrations as spiritually riskylike glitter in a laptop keyboard.

The Basics: What Jehovah’s Witness Teen Life Often Includes

1) Meetings That Felt Like School… After School… Forever

Many Jehovah’s Witness families structure the week around congregation meetings at the Kingdom Hall (and preparation for them): reading, underlining, practicing answers, dressing up, showing up. For a teen, it can feel like you have two livesregular school where you’re trying to be normal, and “the truth” (Witness shorthand for the faith) where you’re trying to be exemplary.

My comics exaggerate the visualsme drowning in highlighters, my eyelids doing slow-motion pushupsbut the rhythm was real: sit, listen, comment, sing, repeat. I learned public speaking early. I also learned how to look attentive while my brain quietly begged for a snack.

2) Field Service: The Original “DoorDash,” But You Deliver a Magazine

Jehovah’s Witnesses are widely known for public preachingoften door-to-door or in other structured forms. As a teen, this meant weekends (and sometimes weekdays) spent walking neighborhoods with adults, practicing short “presentations,” and trying to be brave enough to talk to strangers while also being terrified of running into my classmates.

There’s a special kind of panic that happens when you knock on a door and hear a voice you recognize. My comic version: a dramatic zoom-in, sweat beads, and a caption like, “If this is Tyler from Algebra, I’m moving to the ocean.”

3) Big Events: Conventions, Assemblies, and “Bring a Sweater” Faith

Then there were the larger gatheringsdaylong or multi-day events with talks, baptisms, and thousands of people. The social side could be genuinely warm: seeing friends, swapping stories, feeling like you belonged to a giant community. It could also be exhausting in the way only a formal outfit, fluorescent lighting, and hours of sitting can be.

My comics usually show the teen survival kit: mints, a pen, a notebook, and the ability to nap with your eyes open. (A skill I did not master, despite years of practice.)

School: Where “Normal” and “Neutral” Collide

Birthdays and Holidays: The Cupcake Problem

Many Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t celebrate birthdays, and they avoid many holidays, based on their understanding of Bible principles. That sounds simple until you’re a teenager in an American school system built on party calendars and seasonal spirit weeks.

It meant stepping out during celebrations, declining holiday crafts, and sometimes explaining yourself to teachers who thought you were being punished. My comics capture the moment a teacher says, “It’s okay, you don’t have to singjust clap along!” and teen-me, internally screaming, “Clapping is still participating!”

To outsiders, it can look like deprivation. To a believing Witness teen, it’s framed as loyaltyproof you can stand firm. The weird part is that you can feel proud and embarrassed at the same time. Like: “I’m doing the right thing,” and also, “Please stop looking at me like I’m a Victorian orphan.”

Friendships: “Worldly” Is a Word You Learn Early

Witness culture often distinguishes between friends “in the truth” and “worldly” friends (people outside the faith). Even if a teen is polite and friendly at school, there can be a subtle pressure to keep emotional closeness inside the community. That can shape everything: sleepovers, parties, dating, the music you admit you like, and what you do when classmates invite you to things you’re not supposed to join.

Comics are perfect for this because it’s visual: two speech bubblesone is what you say (“Thanks, I can’t”), and one is what you think (“I want to go so badly, but I also don’t want a lecture that lasts until the Second Coming.”).

Patriotism and Political Neutrality: When Everyone Stands, and You Don’t

Jehovah’s Witnesses are known for political neutrality. In practice, that can include not voting, not campaigning, and avoiding patriotic rituals they view as conflicting with worship. For a teen in school, it can mean sitting quietly during patriotic moments and hoping the room doesn’t interpret your calm silence as a personal attack on the entire United States.

My comic panels show it like a nature documentary: “Here we observe the teenage Witness: attempting to become invisible while thirty peers synchronize their hand-over-heart choreography.”

Dating, Crushes, and the Fine Art of Supervised Feelings

Jehovah’s Witness guidance often treats dating as courtship with marriage in mindnot casual recreation. That shifts the teen experience in a big way. Crushes still happen (because biology does not care about pamphlets), but the rules around acting on them can be strict: who you date, why you date, and how you spend time together.

In comic form, this becomes a whole genre: “Two teens like each other… and so do the three chaperones sitting within eyesight.” It can be sweet, awkward, and frustratingespecially when your non-Witness peers are doing normal teen stuff like going to the movies without a committee.

Baptism and Expectations: The “Adult Choice” With Teen Consequences

Many Witness teens feel a strong push to get baptizedsometimes because they genuinely believe, sometimes because it’s the expected milestone of a “good” young person, and sometimes because everyone around them keeps asking, “So… when are you getting baptized?” like it’s a college application deadline.

Baptism can feel beautiful and meaningful for believers. It can also feel heavy because it raises the stakes. Teen mistakesalready common in the human speciescan carry serious spiritual and social consequences in tight-knit communities. My comics often capture the tension between wanting to grow up and wanting to be allowed to be a kid.

Medical Moments: Blood, Belief, and Big Ethical Questions

One of the most widely discussed Jehovah’s Witness beliefs is the refusal of certain blood transfusions, based on their interpretation of scripture. For adults, that can mean advance directives and careful planning. For teens, it can mean realizingsometimes suddenlythat your family’s beliefs could matter in an emergency.

Many hospitals and medical teams have developed “bloodless medicine” approaches and patient blood management strategies that help people who cannot or do not wish to receive transfusions. But when minors are involved, ethical and legal frameworks can become complicated, especially in life-threatening situations.

My comics don’t turn this into shock value. They focus on the teen perspective: the first time you hear the topic discussed at home, the laminated medical card, the fear of what you don’t fully understand, and the way adults talk in careful sentences that land like bricks in a kid’s stomach.

What People Don’t See From the Outside

The Good Parts: Community, Purpose, and Structure

If you grew up in it and believed it, there were real upsides: a strong community, a clear moral framework, adults who took “spiritual goals” seriously, and a sense of mission bigger than yourself. Some teens thrive with structure. Some find comfort in certainty. Some feel deeply proud of being different.

Comics can hold that truth at the same time as the harder truths. Two panels can contradict each other, and both can be honest: “I feel safe here,” and “I feel trapped here.”

The Hard Parts: Anxiety, Scrutiny, and Feeling Like You’re Performing

For many teens, being a Witness can feel like living on a stage. Your clothes, friends, music, online life, and “spiritual routine” can feel constantly reviewable. Even when nobody is actively policing you, you can internalize the pressurelike carrying an invisible rulebook in your backpack next to your algebra homework.

That pressure is comic material because it’s absurd and real: teen-me worrying that liking a pop song might summon a shepherding visit from the elders (a meeting meant to give guidance). Adult-me sees the humor. Teen-me just wanted to breathe.

How These Comics Can Help Readers (Even If You’ve Never Knocked on a Stranger’s Door)

• For former Witnesses: It can be validating to see the “small weird moments” finally named.
• For current Witnesses: It can be a mirrorsometimes uncomfortable, sometimes comfortingdepending on your experience.
• For teachers and classmates: It’s a guide to understanding why a student opts out, and how to be respectful without making them a spectacle.
• For parents: It shows how beliefs translate into daily teen lifeespecially the social friction points.

Conclusion: A Teen Faith Story, Told in Panels

Making comics about being a teenage Jehovah’s Witness isn’t about reducing a faith to a punchline. It’s about telling the truth in a form that fits: the awkward, human, often funny truth of growing up with strict boundaries in a culture that treats boundaries like optional accessories.

If you take anything from these stories, let it be this: behind every “no thanks” is a kid doing their best with the world they were giventrying to be loyal, trying to belong, and trying to survive adolescence like the rest of humanity. Just with more dress clothes and fewer birthday candles.

Bonus: 10 Extra Comic Moments From My Teenage JW Years (About )

1) The Birthday Cupcake Standoff

The teacher sets down a tray of cupcakes like it’s a peace offering. Everyone cheers. I freeze. My brain runs a full courtroom drama: “If I accept frosting, is that participation?” I smile politely and say, “No thank you.” The class looks at me like I just refused oxygen.

2) “Just Take One Valentine”

A kid hands me a Valentine card. It’s neon pink and smells like bubble gum. I want to be kind, but I’ve been trained for this moment like it’s a pop quiz. I whisper, “I can’t.” The kid says, “Are you mad at me?” And I want to scream, “No, I’m mad at February!”

3) The Pledge of Allegiance Zoom-In

Everyone stands. I stay seated. The room goes quiet in my head, like the audio cut out. I can feel a thousand imaginary eyes on me. In my comic, I’m a tiny stick figure in a sea of standing silhouettes, praying for invisibility like it’s a superpower.

4) Field Service: The Classmate Door

We walk up a driveway. I recognize the porch. I recognize the wind chimes. I recognize the dog bark. My stomach drops. My partner says, “You want to take this one?” I smile with the bravery of someone about to be launched into space without a helmet.

5) Kingdom Hall Small Talk Olympics

After the meeting, adults ask, “How’s school?” and I answer like a politician. “Great! Busy! Learning a lot!” Meanwhile, my real life is a chaotic blender of homework, anxiety, and trying not to accidentally join the chess club if it meets during meeting night.

6) The Music Filter

At school, everyone swaps playlists. I lie and say, “I’m into instrumental stuff.” In my earbuds? A rebellious pop song at volume 2, because volume 3 feels like spiritual misconduct. My comic caption: “Living dangerously, one quiet chorus at a time.”

7) The Assembly Chair Nap

Eight hours into the program, my body tries to power down. I practice the sacred art of “awake face.” My eyes are open, my head is upright, and my soul is asleep in the parking lot. The speaker says something intense, and I nod like I totally heard it. I did not.

8) The “Good Example” Anxiety

Someone says, “The young ones are an example!” and suddenly I’m aware of my posture, my tone, and the fact that I laughed too loud at a joke. In the comic, I’m a teen with a giant “EXAMPLE” sign hovering over me, like a blinking neon billboard.

9) The Secret Crush With a Chaperone Aura

I like someone. They like me. We speak in polite sentences from six feet apart while an adult watches with the focus of airport security. My comic shows little heart icons trying to float between us, only to get intercepted by a hovering “chaperone cloud.”

10) The Double Life Homework Spiral

It’s Sunday night. I have school assignments. I have meeting prep. I have a brain that wants to be a normal teen for five minutes. My comic ends with me buried under books, whispering, “If I highlight enough, will time slow down?” Spoiler: it did not.