Reclaiming the Body

Navigating the complexities of conflicting identities, material constraints, and relational and organizational control, the author recounts her experience as a member of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society (i.e., Jehovah’s Witnesses) over a span of ten years. She tells the story of a life disrupted as she married into the organization, realizing the marital and organizational control she would have to endure, and the sacrifices she had to make to fulfill the expectations of her role as Witness and wife. The author relays how bodies are regulated through organizational identification processes and concertive control and the influence of these mandates on marital life, career aspirations, social networks, and the acts of resistance that would let her break away from organizational and relational grasps. The author explores how freedom of movement and identification into an alternate organization—the circus—would start a process of organizational deidentification that would ultimately lead to embodied freedom. She concludes with an introspective reflection on autoethnography as a form of inquiry and resonance for communities with similar lived experiences.