about Kim
Kim Pippa Tonnesen has an MA in English with an emphasis in Rhetoric and Teaching Writing. She can often be found reading a book, and that book will more than likely be a memoir. Writing a memoir has always been on her bucket list, and with Dad, Mom, Me, and Jehovah that dream has become a reality.
When not absorbed in the latest page-turner, Kim is a tenured English professor at Columbia College in the California foothills and finds joy in teaching composition and helping her students’ stories come to life.
Dad, Mom, Me, and Jehovah
Raised in a close-knit Jehovah’s Witness family, Kim’s childhood is fractured by the onset of her mother’s chronic illness and is followed, five years later, by her father’s death. Unable to grasp her deep loss or push beyond the narrowness of her worldview, Kim stays close within the confines of the church.
Not until early adulthood, when Kim endures a difficult marriage, does she begin to question the boundaries set for her by her religion. Hesitantly at first, but with growing determination, she, with the help of extraordinary friends outside the faith, opens herself to new ways of being in the world. In doing so, she leaves her husband and the church and comes to terms with her long-buried grief.
Dad, Mom, Me, and Jehovah chronicles Kim’s journey on a convoluted path out of the fold of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Reviews
"This is the kind of book that once you start, you can’t put down. Pippa’s memoir on growing up as a Jehovah’s Witness recounts in honest, moving detail what happens to a child when her family suffers deep trauma, not once, but twice. Her relatives surround her with love, and initially, her religion provides the structure she needs to survive her childhood. Her first marriage, however, starts to erode her belief systems, and the outside world penetrates enough that she begins to question her faith. This is a unique coming of age story that shows how a child grows into a curious, courageous adult and finds her place in the world."
SALLY MCCLELLAN
Author: Dear Sven: a Novel in Letters; The Waitress's Dream & Other Tales of Unlikely Healing; Grace's Instinct: Poems
Listen to Kim's interview on The Local Scribe
"After a scant ten years of work, Kim Pippa Tonnesen has finished her memoir Dad, Mom, Me, and Jehovah, a gripping tale of growing up as a Jehovah's Witness, facing the loss of both parents at a young age and navigating a crisis of faith that resulted in her leaving the religion."