I am really shocked right now. I just received a note in the mail from an older woman who had been a WD in my former district for the last five years. She wrote to tell me that she left "the cult"(!) and that she is completely done with everybody from SGI. She is looking for support and fact-checking from me and said if I ever want to chat to call her. She also made note that she would understand if I don't trust her as she was really involved for a while.

Holy moly!! I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet. I might just refer her to this board for now....

UPDATE

I texted her and apparently she had already checked out reddit and quora but said she couldn't find much info beyond those sites. I don't know if she's seen our sub specifically but I did tell her about us, as well as the fact that I wrote this thread: she said she didn't mind my sharing about her, as she doesn't know how to use reddit enough to participate.

Sadly, she feels a lot of shame about having been duped into SGI. I assured her we have all been there and that SGI misled us. We only did the best we could with what we knew at the time.

She also shared with me her tipping point for leaving: " Mine was distance and freedom from endless obligations to the district and blatant hypocrisy and elitism that I could no longer ignore. And the endless grubbing for donations. And other shit ...."

Sounds like our theories here about the pandemic helping people to leave SGI is correct! 🥳

Another interesting thing she mentioned is that she knew from the first year she practiced that Ikeda has dementia, citing her background and knowing the signs.

So yeah, hoping to talk with her some more and see if she wants to participate in our sub. 👍🏻