I ran away from the strictest Amish community – we had no indoor plumbing
A former Amish woman fled her community the only way she knew how: by jumping off a roof.
Lizzie Ens, health coach and founder of the clean and non-toxic wellness brand Mrs Commandotold The US Sun that she was only 19 when she made plans to leave her Amish community.
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At the age of 19, Lizzie stood on her sister’s roof and gathered the courage to jump.
“It wasn’t just a moment that suddenly happened [decision]“I knew since I was a young teenage girl that I didn’t want to stay there for the rest of my life,” she said.
“It took a few years.”
At the time, Lizzie was staying with her sister in Ohio, where she lived in “the strictest order of Amish society you can grow up in.”
Letters she received from her boyfriend in New York at the time inspired her to take a leap of faith.
“He ran away from the Amish the day before, and I didn’t know he was planning on doing that,” she said.
“He told me he had left, and if I wanted to leave too, they would come that night to pick me up.”
Later that evening, she wrote a suicide note to her mother and climbed onto the five-meter-high roof.
“I sat there for about 30 minutes thinking about how I was going to jump off this roof, and finally I took the plunge,” she said.
“I knew if I broke a bone I would be stuck there.
“I was in the hospital recovering from a broken bone, and the community said, ‘That’s what happens when you run away.’”
SUPER STRICT EDUCATION
Lizzie, who has a twin sister and comes from a mother-led family of 18 children, felt the Amish lifestyle was not for her, even though her family remained members of the covenant.
She explained that Rumspringa, a rite of passage that normally relaxes restrictions for Amish teens around age 16, did not apply to her.
“The [community] “The community I grew up in is the strictest you can ever grow up in,” she said.
“A misconception is Rumspringa, where teens are allowed to go out and explore the world, drive a car, dress in non-Amish clothing and then decide for themselves whether they want to leave or not,” she said.
“Where I come from, we weren’t allowed to do that.
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“Everything was completely impossible to go out and experience the world.”
NOT EVEN AN INDOOR TOILET
Her community’s self-denial practices left her without sanitation, electricity, running water, and processed foods.
“They grow most of their own food and live off what the land provides,” she said.
“They just don’t use any modern technology, period.”
To go to the toilet or shower, Lizzie and her community went to outdoor toilets, where they often used newspaper and had hot water in bathtubs.
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In winter the family relied on wood stoves, but they were not allowed to dress warmly to stay warm in the bitter cold.
“Women are only allowed to wear dresses, so if it’s really cold and windy, the wind will blow through your dress,” Lizzie says.
“That was one of the worst things. I had never worn pants in my entire life; I didn’t even know what it felt like.”
RUN AWAY
Two weeks after her departure, she was found by her mother and twin sister and they tried to persuade her to return.
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“It was hard because it wasn’t that I didn’t love my mom, and it wasn’t that I didn’t love my sisters and siblings,” she said.
“I just knew I didn’t belong there anymore.”
Almost twenty years after her departure, the now 38-year-old looks back on the period of adjustment to the ‘real world’.
Highlights include flipping a light switch in a room, experiencing a shower, using a microwave and discovering a drive-through, all for the first time at age 19.
Lizzie currently lives in Phoenix, Arizona, with her five-year-old son.
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She explained that the Amish lifestyle was not for her, but that she would pass on the Amish community principles to her only child.
“I agree that they teach valuable life lessons to children. We learn to have a strong work ethic, we are creative, we are structured and disciplined,” she said.
“That’s a big part that’s missing in the modern world: structure and discipline. We had no electronics, no TV, we [couldn’t] “Just say, ‘Hey, I’m just going to watch Netflix today and not do any work.’”
Lizzie, who calls herself a “visionary,” added that she has also gained more respect for her community and the bonds between them in recent times.
“I think a lot of people can learn a lot from it,” she said.
“When my father died unexpectedly when I was 13, the entire community came together.
“They dropped everything to help the family that just lost a loved one. That’s something they’re really, really good at.
“You can leave something behind and still respect and honor it. For me, my job is to respect and honor what it taught me.”
