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The Beginning
My story begins in the summer of 1980. I was born into an Amish family. In my family, I am the third of eight children. Amish families tend to be fairly large, and sons are expected to assist with heavy farm chores. I had three brothers and four sisters, so us girls would learn the inside work. I did help with the planting of crops, cleaning out animal stalls, and milking cows. Our ordnung was semi-conservative. We could use small safety pins as well as straight pins to pin together our aprons and dresses, as long as the safety pins were not openly seen. Straight pins alone were acceptable for our hair styles, but we could use bobby pins to keep our bonnets on our heads on windy days. I went through rumspringa when I was 16, and it ended just after I turned 18. At 19, I was married. Our courtship began when I woke up from sleep to see a strange boy in my room. We married three months later, but we never had children. I was unable to have children. One day in November of 2004, my husband went out to repair some faulty farm equipment. An accident occured and he was killed. Our ordnung is not always pleasant, and the rules for widows can be very unfair. I had to live with my parents in law from then on. I never remarried, but that was my own decision. I remained with my in laws, but it was almost as though I had been shunned. No Amish wants that. I was almost cut off from every area of social existence. It was a very hard, sad existence. It was here that I began to realize I could no longer be Amish. I knew I would need to get away, or otherwise I would be a shadow, a ghost, walking amongst the living. It was a fate worse than death, when you are still fairly young and an Amish person. I knew I would need to leave everyone and everything behind, and start over again in the world of the "English", or non-Amish people. But to do that would mean a permanent shunning, and the closing of that door to my old world, my family, and everything and everyone that I had ever known.
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