PEOPLE
Amish Woman, 23, Shunned By Her Family After Leaving Community: Inside the Restrictive Lifestyle She Escaped (Exclusive)
Martha Ross, who now makes TikTok videos about the Amish experience, says she doesn't miss anything about the lifestyle — except her family
By Zoey Lyttle Published on October 23, 2024 04:00PM EDT
Martha Ross lived the first 20 years of her life waiting for answers.
She knew she wasn't supposed to question her lifestyle, but Ross couldn't help it. She wondered why everyone in her community dressed a certain way, why they had so many rules and why leaving was such a frightening idea.
Like most young Amish adults, Ross was meant to get baptized around age 20 or 21, meaning she would become an official member of the Amish church. After her baptism, she would be expected to follow every rule and uphold values she never fully understood.
"I was assuming that when I got baptized or was ready to get baptized, my questions will be answered. But I was wrong," Ross, now 23, tells PEOPLE exclusively. "I was always told, 'You just have to do what you're told. We can't change the things that we've always done.' When I questioned just before I was ready to get baptized, I got the same answer, and I was not expecting that."
She eventually saw a solution in her lack of clarity: Ross had to leave the Amish community. She didn't come to that decision overnight, and she adopted a modern lifestyle gradually. But even after much deliberation and some time to adjust to non-Amish ways, Ross's initial departure was haunted by confusion and doubt.
"It was just overwhelming, and I was miserable for a long while," she recalls. Once fully immersed in her new life, she couldn't help but think about the help she wished she had.
Despite some initial resistance, she learned how to use social media with the help of her ex-Amish husband, Tyler. She soon realized the extent of opportunity on platforms like YouTube and TikTok, and started making videos to educate others on the Amish lifestyle and share her story.
"I was like, 'If I share what I have learned through the process and actually point out the things, then it could really help someone else who left the community or even other people who left other religions or are having doubts about other things,' " Ross says of her reasons for starting on social media, which has since become her full-time job.
But a few years ago, at that crucial turning point before Ross was meant to be baptized, she didn't have any of the resources she now hopes to offer others. She looked for answers herself because the then-20-year-old didn't feel informed enough to become a fully indoctrinated member of the Amish church. She knew she wouldn't meet the community's expectations "without really knowing the truth," she explains.
Throughout her upbringing, Ross says she was told that most Amish rules are sourced directly from the Bible, so she consulted religious texts to find the explanations that would instill enough confidence in her to get baptized.
"I really searched," she recalls. "I was like, 'There's no way that all these people just do what they're told without knowing the reason why they do the things and without understanding their own religion.' "
But what she discovered didn't clarify any rules. Instead, it bubbled her questions into even more reasons for uncertainty. "I found they were taking things way out of context in the Bible just to back up what their rules were, and then a lot of the stuff wasn't even in the Bible at all."
Ross's ultimate decision to leave her Amish community near Middlefield, Ohio, didn't come easily or quickly. She spent a year poring over the Bible to decide whether or not to get baptized, which would also allow her to get married. But since Ross didn't have a boyfriend at the time, she wasn't in a rush to the altar at all, giving her even more reason to consider a new, more modern lifestyle.
Before she left the community, Ross moved out of her parents' home, which she explains is very uncommon, especially amongst young Amish women. Her mother and father didn't like that she lived on her own, but since she was 20 at the time, they couldn't force her to stay.
"They just told me when I moved out that, 'If you ever leave the Amish, you will not be welcome here.' I was like, 'Whoa, okay. Where did that come from?' " Ross remembers, noting that she is the only one of her siblings to leave. Her four brothers — two older and two younger — are still in the community.
Finally, Ross accepted that her Bible studies were only confirming her instinct to question Amish tenets, and she realized staying wasn't an option, despite the repercussions she knew would follow.
"In the Amish, everyone's taught the same thing ... we need to follow all these rules as well in order to get to heaven. If you leave the Amish, then you're very likely going straight to hell," she tells PEOPLE about three years after she left. "That's what we're taught. So it is all very scary, but I just could not blindly follow everyone else."
Since Ross's departure was gradual — starting with her moving out of her parents' place and continuing as she got a job at a factory and eventually started renting from non-Amish people — there was plenty of time for others to try and convince her to stay.
"Everyone in the community, especially my family, tried their absolute best to keep me from leaving. It was so, so stressful," Ross reflects. "They treated me differently, and even if they didn't say too much about the situation, you could tell that it was just so much judgment."
Ross says that if she had to pinpoint a time when she officially left the Amish life, it was sometime before she turned 22 when she traded the traditional garb for a more modern wardrobe. But at that point, she'd already stopped going to church in the community, which complicates the timeline of her leaving.
Plus, she never really stated her intention to leave. She says it's "not really a good idea" to officially announce it since people in the community tend to have severe reactions to drastic departure. "It's hard to handle," she adds.
This year, Ross felt compelled to finally have that honest conversation with her father ahead of her wedding to her now-husband, Tyler, 31.
"I was still going to my parents' house, visiting every now and then, and I was dressed Amish so they didn't actually realize that I had already completely left," she explains.
She guessed that her father would declare that she was shunned, meaning that she would be ex-communicated from the church and largely cut off from communication with her family. "I knew there was a possibility," Ross admits. "But I still didn't think that he would say I can't see them at all."
He delivered the hard truth after what turned out to be Ross's final visit with her family. She remembers the darkness around her when she walked outside, out of the house, and she remembers how she had to push through her nerves to tell him, "I am getting married and I'm not willing to be Amish."
"It was a short conversation," Ross says. Her father ultimately couldn't change her mind. "He made it known that they are not happy with my decisions and because of their belief, they don't think it would be right to even let me be around the family anymore."
PEOPLE was not able to reach out to Ross' parents and family for comment, as she declined to provide contact information for them.
Ross says she used to live fairly close to her parents' home, but after the confrontation with her father, she and Tyler moved a little over an hour away.
"I just told my husband that I can't live in that community with all the judgment. Knowing that my family lives a couple miles away, I will always see them, but they will ignore me because I am not allowed to be in their life anymore," says Ross. "I always thought of my family as really kind and they would never shun me, but I was wrong."
Even so, Ross says her family is the only part of Amish life that she misses. "Other than that, I feel really comfortable living in the modern normal world," she shares. "I really appreciate some of the things that I wasn't allowed to have or even allowed to research. And it's just so much more peace."
Since leaving, she's been able to fill the gaps left by her Amish education, which doesn't cover the same subjects taught in a modern school. Ross says she never had history or social studies classes, and math lessons were limited to the absolute basics.
When she initially made steps into non-Amish society, Ross says she had some difficulty communicating with others and at times didn't even understand what people were saying to her. Now, however, she's on her way to getting her GED with the help of a tutor.
She's had some general guidance from her husband as well. Tyler wasn't born Amish, but he did convert to the lifestyle around age 19. He left about three years later but still worked as a taxi driver for the Amish, which is how he and Ross met.
Last year, Ross got a driver's license of her own, giving her a new sense of independence and security. But she's also grateful to have access to the more "simple things" modern technology offers, like recipes on Pinterest and social media, the latter of which has become her means of living.
Ross says she takes her TikTok and YouTube content "pretty seriously," and not just because she monetizes it as a primary source of income. Her videos often address frequently asked questions about the Amish, break down certain rules she had to follow or explain pieces of her own story, like listing some of the reasons why she left.
On her TikTok account, The Amish Way, she's also discussed the details of traditional clothing, like women's bonnets and shawls, and offered insight into lesser-known aspects of the lifestyle, like the Rumspringa rite of passage, how Amish people celebrate birthdays and how they show each other affection.
"I think there is so much false information about the Amish, and it hasn't been until very recent years that some Amish people have been speaking about their experiences on social media," she explains. "I do not want to have any more false information, at least not from me. I can do my part in speaking the truth about my experience and my journey."
Since she's started sharing content online, she's encountered "so many people who are genuinely curious" about the Amish lifestyle. Ross is glad to educate others and excited to see that she's not the only ex-Amish person speaking about her upbringing.
"If you haven't actually been Amish and you don't have the true insight into the way they do things, their mindset and everything," says the creator, whose TikTok has over 64,000 followers. She appreciates how other former Amish people bring a range of experiences to demonstrate how the lifestyle differs between communities.
Even Ross herself has something to learn from these other ex-Amish stories shared online. While she was raised in a more orthodox community, she's seen others discuss what it's like to live in further evolved sects.
"There's so many different ways of believing. Some families really push on one certain thing, like, 'Do not dress anything but Amish,' and other families are like, 'Well, that's not such a big deal, but you cannot have a hoodie,' " she tells PEOPLE of what she's discovered thanks to online testimonies. "I just found out some of the New Order Amish actually have electricity. I think they even drive cars or have computers ... and I didn't realize that until now."
Ross says she's been surprised by the success of some of her videos, and she generally enjoys compiling her content. Most of her viewers are encouraging and engage in the comments, but she's been interested to see some "pushback" and negativity from former Amish people.
"I think they just have the same kind of mindset that they had when they were in the Amish community, and they don't really realize it," says Ross. "I don't know why. I was really surprised about that."
The backlash doesn't deter Ross. She's confident in the messages she sends out into the world and the ways she conveys her story, just as she was confident in her decision to leave, at least for the most part.
All of the research she did at that time when she was still debating whether or not to get baptized — the same discoveries she tries to share with social media viewers — hardened Ross to the "guilt-tripping" and "mental wars" that waged when she started taking steps to leave the Amish lifestyle.
"It helped me out tremendously. Without that, I could never have been completely sure," she says, looking back on her decision to start a new life. "Instead of just trying to please them and do what they say, all the studying I did just made me feel at peace."
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