Growing Up Amish

 Yes, it is true. Amish children can’t have toys with faces. This is because they think it is idolatry. Now, this is easy to hear and go “wow that is crazy” and then slip through the other ear. Yet, what is the more profound psychological impact of growing up with faceless dolls? A world where when you “make believe” to care for another human, that human was faceless?   A lack of identity is fundamental to the Amish and plain communities. A person in these communities is never an individual. They are a human that has been patterned through corporal punishment (starting in infanthood - 6 months) to be uniform and reflect who they were told to be to avoid enteral damnation.    My family was Charity which is a cross between Amish and Mennonite churches. We were allowed to have dolls with faces. However, numerous families within our network of plain churches were either still Amish or formally Amish and still maintained it was idolatry for dolls to have faces. ...

 I grew up in an Amish/Mennonite/Anabaptist isolated religious community called Charity in Northern Michigan. The best part of my childhood however was the abundance of healthy food. It took a lot of hard work, but the taste is unbeatable when homemade and fresh. Us kids (I’m the true middle child of 11) had to work hard growing up spending hours a day in the summer caring for the garden and animals. Yet, to this day no tomato sauce is truly good when compared to my Mom’s growing up.    Everything was homemade. If we wanted a sweet treat for breakfast like cinnamon kuchen (recipe in next post!), a sweet treat made of raised bread dough poked down before baking and in the final 10 minutes filled with a sweet sauce made of cream, brown sugar, or maple syrup, butter, and cinnamon, we’d have to scoop out whole wheat grain berries from the 25-pound sack and grind in the grain meal by hand till we had enough flour.  Grain mill we had growing up  When we used Maple syr...

The term "Amish" is frequently used as a cute branding tool for rural areas and groceries ranging from chicken to baked goods. I grew up in one of these “plain” religious communities. Women and children were treated horrifically. As such, it is hard to see depictions in the media or newspapers that romanticize the “Amish” culture and ways. Below is a letter recently written to the editor of the local paper in response to featuring a section romanticizing the Amish for clickbait.   To Whom It May Concern,  I love reading the news and greatly appreciate the service you provide our local community. I was surprised, however, one day to see a Lifestyle Section titled “Amish Kitchen” as a regularly featured column on your social media pages. I found this greatly troubling. I grew up in a hybrid Amish/Mennonite Community in Copemish called Charity Christian Fellowship and knew many people who I frequently interacted with from Amish, Mennonite, and other communities.  These ...

 Children in Amish and plain religious communities like the Mennonites or Charity receive a very different education compared to children growing up in mainstream society . It is common for children in Amish and Mennonite communities to either be homeschooled or attend a 1st - 8th-grade religious school run within the local church community.  In my case, we didn’t have enough congregants to have a school and we were homeschooled. Students in these communities are only taught a few subjects: reading/English and math. There is no history, science, geography, music, or art education.  Children are taught to read and do basic math i.e enough to do the basic measuring for building or cooking. No writing beyond the 1st-grade level while learning your letters. No critical thinking or analysis. No creativity or divergence, only replication.  Growing up "school” was at most only two or three hours a day between the morning and afternoon chores. Once I got to the 4th/5th grade...

  I grew up in a religious community similar to the Amish and Mennonite communities called “Charity”. This name came from the main church located in Pennsylvania called Charity Christian Fellowship. Our church was located in Michigan and called Marilla Christian Fellowship.     I'm the one wearing brown in the center Church members had no contact with the outside world and kept members isolated.  Men were the head of the church and the home with women being homemakers and having children. Inside this world, there was no such thing as science or musical instruments. The police were only a vague group described as evil people who served Satan and would hurt us if they came in contact. I first learned that there were people in this world who didn't believe in beating women and children at a doctor's office by chance due to having serious health issues. I used the laddies' room alone and saw a poster depicting domestic violence with big Xs.  I now work in fore...