36-year-old Lizzie Ens grew up in an Amish community in the US. She soon felt that she did not belong there and tried to escape with her twin sister 19 years ago. They returned soon after, but two years later Lizzie tried again. She left her eighteen brothers and sisters behind and started a new life in the ‘normal’ world.
LOOK. Lizzie talks about her escape
The dietician shares stories about her past on TikTok. Lizzie was part of the Swartzentruber Amish, one of the most conservative branches of all Amish communities in the United States. The members of the Swartzentruber Amish do not use running water and have no sanitary facilities. In addition, she was also not allowed to cut her hair and was not allowed to shave legs, armpits or intimate parts.
At a certain point she had enough of all these rules and planned her escape. She wrote a note for her mother and crawled onto the roof: “Then I jumped off the roof, I landed on the ground and I ran until I couldn’t anymore.”
“I didn’t have a national register number,” Lizzie says in one of her videos. “So when I left, I still had to register. And remember, I only had $20 when I left.” With that 20 dollars she bought clothes for the first time and had her hair cut. She found a job as a dishwasher and integrated into ‘normal’ society with the help of other ex-Amish.
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 used to be Amish and tells how she broke with her past: “I wasn’t allowed to shave anywhere!” | Abroad){kind=link}