#202 – Nora Bontrager
Rebuilding Her Life After Leaving The Amish
Nora Bontrager was born in an Amish community in Indiana where her life revolved around hard work. Each day she would bookend school with 2 hours of chores in the morning and evening. Her life was closed off from a lot of the world and she had the feeling that “these people just don’t get it.”
In a life that revolved around hard work, school felt like her only respite. The place that she felt like she could be a truer version of herself, but in the Amish community, school ends after 8th grade. And she was forced to return home and work with her father.
Each morning she looked at the stars and felt so much fear as she walked towards the barn because her father was there waiting for her. She spent the next year rarely speaking for the fear of setting him off. And without school as an outlet, there was no escape.
Even in her near silence she was seen as defiant and unruly in the eyes of her father who decided to bring in the community ministers to advise him. They leveled even stricter rules and expectations and she felt that men were controlling every aspect of her life.
She eventually escaped the community, but then was forced to rebuild her life, alone, and in a world that was so different from the life she’d known.
Today, she is the most healed that she’s ever been and on a journey of finding her voice.
Tune in to learn about:
From Amish Beginnings to Self-Discovery: Join us as we delve into Nora Bontrager’s unique life journey, starting from her upbringing in an Amish community in Ohio, where hard work was the norm, and isolation was the reality.
School: A Sanctuary Amidst Hardship: Explore how Nora found solace and authenticity in the confines of her school, her only respite in an otherwise challenging Amish life.
Trapped in Silence: A Year of Fear: Uncover the harrowing year in Nora’s life when she could scarcely speak, living in fear of her father and the absence of any escape.
The Weight of Strict Expectations: Learn how community ministers further tightened their grip on Nora’s life, imposing stricter rules and intensifying the control exerted by men in her community.
Escaping the Amish: Rebuilding Alone: Follow Nora’s journey as she bravely escapes her Amish community, only to face the daunting task of rebuilding her life in a world vastly different from her own.
Finding Voice and Healing: Discover Nora’s ongoing quest for self-expression and healing, as she shares her inspiring journey toward becoming the most healed version of herself.
To find other similar episodes by topic, click here.
Connect with Nora
Instagram | @nora_bontrager
TikTok | @norabontrager6
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Episode Transcript
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Coming up on this episode of The Courage to Change, sponsored by lionrock.life.
Nora Bontrager:
Ministers came to our house, and they were like, “You have to stop this. You can’t be in connection with these people. You can’t keep learning from these people. You have to cut everything off.” And we were like, “No. I mean, you can’t unlearn something that feels that good.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Hello, beautiful people. Welcome to The Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast. My name is Ashley Loeb Blassingame, and I am your host. Today I have an amazing guest, Nora Bontrager. Nora was born in an Amish community in Ohio where her life revolved around hard work. Each day, she would bookend school with two hours of chores in the morning and the evening. Her life was closed off from a lot of the world, and she had the feeling, “These people just don’t get it.” In a life that revolved around hard work, school felt like her only respite, the place that she felt like she could be the truer version of herself. But in the Amish community, school ends after the eighth grade. Each morning she looked at the stars and felt so much fear as she walked towards the barn because her father was there waiting for her.
She spent the next year rarely speaking for fear of setting him off and without school as an outlet, there was no escape. Even in her near silence, she was seen as defiant and unruly in the eyes of her father, who decided to bring in the community ministers to advise him. They leveled even stricter rules and expectations, and she felt that men were controlling every aspect of her life. She eventually escaped the community, but then was forced to rebuild her life alone. And in a world that was so different from the life she’d known, today she’s the most healed that she’s ever been and on a journey of finding her voice. This woman is exceptional, absolutely incredible courage to leave the life that she knew, to leave the Amish community. She did so at first with her husband, who she married in the Amish community, and then left with him, and then later on her own with her children, raising them as a single mother.
And the absolute guts it takes to do what she did and leave the only life she’s ever known to be in such a different world is just wow, absolutely incredible. I’m super grateful she came on here to tell her story, and I love how all of the things that she did to get to where she is now are so relatable to all the other types of recovery that we talk about in terms of starting over and building a new life with new rules and new people and new circumstances. And she did just that. Please, please, please enjoy Nora Bontrager. Let’s do this.
Audio Recording:
You are listening to the Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast. We are a community of recovering people who have overcome the odds and found the courage to change. Each week, we share stories of recovery from substance abuse, eating disorders, grief and loss, childhood trauma and other life-changing experiences. Come join us no matter where you are on your recovery journey.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Well, thank you for being here. I know we’ve had to reschedule a bunch, and I’m just super grateful to get to do this interview with you.
Nora Bontrager:
Thanks for inviting me here.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. You have an amazing story. So you grew up Amish. Can you tell us a little bit about what that actually means? I think people, they’ll see the horse and buggy and this, “Oh, that’s Amish.” But what does it mean to be Amish?
Nora Bontrager:
I think what it means to be Amish is more like the culture, the lifestyle that they live. Living without electricity, no phones, I mean, for most people, some of that is changing. But for me, as I grew up, there was no phones. There was no electricity. There was no cars, no vehicles. All the equipment that we used was run with horses and things like that. And then the way that they dress, they make their own clothes. I grew up sewing my own clothes, all my clothes. And then I got married and I sewed my husband’s clothes and my kids’ clothes, and just a lot of things that the outside world doesn’t do for themselves like that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What is it about electricity that God believes one should not have?
Nora Bontrager:
So there’s a lot of different definitions of their belief or ways of, the way that different people answer those questions. But the way that I was raised was we are not to be part of the world, not worldly. That would be worldly. That would be a part of the world. That’s how the world lives, so we will not do that. So we will stay separate from them in that way.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Got it. Okay. So it keeps you separate. Talk to me about what it was like growing up Amish. Where did you grow up? What was that like? What did your childhood look like?
Nora Bontrager:
I was raised in Indiana, and I still live pretty close to where I was raised on the outskirts of the Amish community. I just moved a little bit. As a kid, I don’t remember playing a whole lot. I worked a whole lot. The majority of my life consisted around work. I would go to school, and before I would go to school, I would have chores, like milking cows in the morning, feeding the cows, feeding the horses, feeding the chickens, all kinds of animals that my dad would decide to have. And so all kinds of chores in the morning before I’d go to school and walk back home. As soon as we got home, I just remember being allowed to have a snack and go right to work.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did that make you walk more slowly going home?
Nora Bontrager:
I think it got to be such a routine. I don’t know that it did. It was just the life that I lived. I didn’t know anything else. I didn’t know that I could play. I didn’t know that that would be an option.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So tell me, how many siblings do you have?
Nora Bontrager:
I have four siblings. I have three sisters and one brother.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And what birth order are you?
Nora Bontrager:
So my brother’s the oldest, and then I had two sisters, and then there was me and my younger sister after me, so I was second to youngest.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What were your relationships like with them?
Nora Bontrager:
Growing up, my relationship with my brother was always like… I didn’t connect with him a whole lot. I don’t remember a whole lot, honestly, of being in his life, but my relationship with my sisters was I was really close. My parents, they struggled their whole life, my whole life, so I couldn’t connect with them. I was scared of them. But I did connect with my sisters in a way that most people looked at us and they were like, “How do you do that? How are you that close with your sisters?”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Tell me about your mom.
Nora Bontrager:
My mom was sick a lot, so my parents are both tiny. My dad was a hard worker, and he would go, go, go, and my mom couldn’t keep up. There was some pressure. There was a lot of pressure for her to keep up with the work and stay busy, get a lot of things done. There’s a big load on a mom’s shoulders as an Amish woman, and she didn’t do well. She got sick a lot because of all the pressure, all the work that was put on her. It was her job as an Amish woman to keep the household going, to raise the kids, to sew all the clothes, to make all the food, do all the gardening, put all the food away. It’s the mom’s job to do all those things. And it was too much for her. She broke, and so she was [inaudible 00:08:03] in her own little world. She couldn’t really be there for us. I didn’t connect well with her. I am able to now more than ever, but as a kid, I didn’t receive much from her as far as nurturing or anything. There was just distance.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And what was your relationship like with your father?
Nora Bontrager:
He was more, like I said, way much more busy. He pushed himself so hard, and he still does, just works all day and comes home and just crashes. That’s what he did. I was kind of the one to push the boundaries. I didn’t necessarily do it intentionally. It was who I was. I couldn’t be otherwise, I guess. As a kid, I was spontaneous. I was happy. I would try new things and want to be playful. He didn’t like that. He did everything in his power. I don’t know if he did it intentionally. I don’t know if he knew what he… I mean, I don’t know about that. But for him to be like, “I’m going to shut her down,” I don’t think that he did that, he told himself that. But there’s something about my way of being that would trigger him very intensely. I just remember maybe spilling a glass of milk, and he would just explode in my face, just angry. And so I grew up in fear of him.
I remember around 11, 12 where I shut down at home. I used to be super happy and just fun. My aunt would still tell me that. She’s like, “I saw that happen. You are so much fun, and at a certain age, you shut down.” I remember going to school, being so happy, being at school, just loving, completely loving school and then coming home, and I wouldn’t say a word. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything while I was at home, just shut down so hard. And I think it just came from being yelled at or always being the one to get the brunt of my dad’s anger. “Why does he respond to me in the way that he does? But I don’t see it happen to my siblings, none of them, honestly, as much as I received.” As a teenager, I would… Okay, so I went to school until I was in grade eight, and so that was as far as we’d go.
And then there was a timeframe between eighth grade and the time that we were allowed to go be with the youth after you’re 16, and then be a part of the events that happened with the teenagers. And during that time, I was at home alone with my parents because my siblings were either at school or had jobs. And so I was alone at home, and I had my chores that I’d need to do in the morning. And I just remember during that timeframe, there was so much fear going out into the barn, knowing that there’s nobody out there except my dad. And I’m putting myself in that vulnerable position of how do I even be with him? Sometimes there’d just be silence because we didn’t know even what to say. So that was a really, really tough time for me. I couldn’t connect with my dad. I couldn’t connect with my mom. I was at home. They were the only people I was with around that time, and so I kept to myself a lot. Just didn’t talk. Just stayed in my bed as much as possible in my bedroom.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Were you guys allowed to read or draw, or what were some of the activities that you did outside of working?
Nora Bontrager:
I did some reading. I was never a big reader, but I did some, and that helped. It helped me get out of my world a little bit into another world, something else. And then I had this little hobby that I loved. I’m trying to think what it’s called. It’s like a plastic canvas with holes where you put thread through it. I would make little just random little things out of that. I’m just thinking about that just now. I forgot that I did that. And that kind of saved me, something I could do with my hands that I just loved. That must have been healing for me at the time.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Yeah. What were some of the ideas around sex in the community?
Nora Bontrager:
Okay, so I got married, wasn’t told a single thing about sex.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So you had no idea how children came into the world, how babies were made?
Nora Bontrager:
No, no. Just before I got married, my sister handed me a book to read. It was hard to read. It was a book that was hard to read, and I wasn’t into reading that much. And so I didn’t get around to reading it a whole lot. I remember sitting in my bedroom. Outside of my bedroom door, we had a little area where we had a whole section of encyclopedias. And I remember reading some books and finding some words around sex and things like that, like birth and words that I didn’t understand. And I would try to make sense out of what they’re saying in the book that I was reading. I had fear around it. It felt so foreign, my body kind of responding in fear of what is this? It’s a world that I don’t know anything about, and it’s scary.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What about growing up on a farm? Did you see animals give birth and have sex and that sort of mating and that kind of thing? Was that ever talked about?
Nora Bontrager:
It was never talked about. I did get to see some. My dad would put heifers to the bowl. But there again, you see something. You are so conditioned to not question anything. It’s just like, “That’s what we do. Now, that’s done. Now we move on to the next thing.” And so I don’t remember even being curious about it that much. It’s just like that’s what the cows did.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, right, right. That’s what the cows did. Yeah. Yeah. So how did you find out about sex?
Nora Bontrager:
Well, the book that my sister gave me helped me some. My ex, the guy that I married, he was more knowledgeable in it, and so he kind of helped me learn some of it. But still, it was just trial and error. Nobody to talk to be like, “Hey, how does this work? Can you give me tips? Can you help me?” Nobody, except possibly my sisters a little bit, but very little.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And how old were you when you got married?
Nora Bontrager:
I was 20 when I got married. We were both 20.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
There’s a period of time where the Amish can leave and come back and makes the choice to stay. Was that something you partook in?
Nora Bontrager:
No, my parents live in a district where it’s like super, super strict. The community here, the majority of the kids do that. But there’s three districts inside this community here in Indiana where they’re just super strict, even more than the rest of the community. And I was in the strictest of the three. I don’t know what they would’ve done if I would’ve done that, but the people in my district didn’t do that. The partying and buying a vehicle, phone, things like that, I didn’t do that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What was married life like?
Nora Bontrager:
I got pregnant right away, didn’t know about birth control. I might’ve known about it. I didn’t know how to do that. So I got pregnant right away, and my oldest was born, and 11 months later I had another one. So lots of stress, lots of pressure on young moms. Even when we have babies, there’s still all the clothes to sew. There’s still all the pressure to keep your house spotless. And then we take turns having church at our houses, at our homes. When it was my turn to have church, there was a lot of pressure to have the house, so clean the whole house, got a spring, fall cleaning or whatever, got a whole deep clean. And everything had to be organized, so much pressure to have everything done perfectly and have all the food prepared for the whole congregation. And here I was, just two little babies, fussy. I was getting to the point where my mom was getting sick, breaking down.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What did your husband do for work? How does that work in the community? How did they make a living and make food? And everybody grows their own?
Nora Bontrager:
Most of them actually have jobs. My dad didn’t, and there’s people that don’t, that just do the farming. And I think there’s more and more where they go get a job. There’s less farming. But my husband at the time, he worked at a furniture shop. He also taught school for a year and a half, but mostly the furniture shop. And then there’s RV factories here, and so he worked at an RV factory also.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How many babies did you guys end up having?
Nora Bontrager:
So we had four before we separated.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And what was the transition with your husband into a lesser strict district? Because before you left the community totally, didn’t you move to another district?
Nora Bontrager:
Yes. That was kind of the beginning of some sort of journey for us. So we had the two babies in the beginning, two under one, and it’s a lot. And our marriage struggled. We were suffering. And so we heard of this guy from Ohio. He’s a counselor, and he was here for a seminar. I was like, “We need to go. We have to go. We need to find some sort of help.” And so we did, and it opened our eyes to a lot of things. It expanded our view of what’s possible in life, and so we were excited. And so he has a counseling center in Ohio, where we ended up going out there for a week, and he counseled us for a week. We learned so much. It helped.
And we came home super excited. We were like, “You, guys.” We started talking about it, and we were like, “This is exciting. There’s more to life than being depressed or whatever.” The ministers came to our house, and they were like, “You have to stop this. You can’t be in connection with these people. You can’t keep learning from these people. You have to cut everything off.” And we were like, “No. I mean, you can’t unlearn something that feels that good.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So what was it? What were some of the things that you learned or realized from him?
Nora Bontrager:
I feel like the biggest thing that we got from that was a different view of God. The way that we could talk to him, the way that we could connect with him and receive from him. We were kind of taught that there’s this person in the sky, ready to whip you whenever you mess up, ready to punish you, just this distant form of something that I didn’t know how to connect to. And this counselor kind of helped connect that for us.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What did you do after they came to your house? They told you you can’t do this. How did things play out?
Nora Bontrager:
Well, we ended up moving. There was this community in Michigan. My sister was living there at the time. They had moved from what we were seeing, they were more open to a more broader view of God, broader view of our religion that we had, more open, more receptive to what we were learning. And we talked to them about it. And I guess at the time that we started talking to them about it, they were also just learning about it, and they hadn’t made a decision about how they feel about it. So we didn’t get a firm answer as to, “Yeah, no, we don’t believe in this.” And we had the idea that they were open to it, and we moved. And a year and a half into that, they told us that what you’re learning is not going to be okay. You can’t continue to pursue this kind of God. And so we hit a wall with that too. So we were like, “We tried. We tried to find some sort of group that would be okay.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
With your kids, what was it like passing down some of the messages that you grew up with? Did that change your perspective on Amish life? Did you have your kids do a lot of the things that your parents had you do?
Nora Bontrager:
We started out that way with teaching our kids the things that we were taught. Mostly by the time we had moved to Michigan, the boys were probably four and five. So we had started to kind of change our beliefs or have a different view of what we want to teach our kids. So there was a lot of similarities because we didn’t know any different. We were still just very in the beginning stages of our getting to know what we believe and what’s true for us.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Were there things like sexual abuse or cheating or stealing or any of the things that go on in the outside world in the Amish community?
Nora Bontrager:
There’s a lot of that. It’s different in a way because it’s very hidden. You don’t see it from the outside. People don’t know that it goes on, that it happens. But there’s a lot of that that happens, like sexual abuse in families. I didn’t personally experience it, which I’m super grateful. Every time I would go to a counselor or something, I was asked, “Were you sexually abused?” “No, it feels like I was, but I don’t know.” So yeah, there’s a lot of that that happens. The people I know who’ve left, people I talk to, most of the people, they were sexually abused.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What about violence?
Nora Bontrager:
Yeah. The way they discipline their kids are the way that I was disciplined with spanking hard. Outside of that, I wasn’t physically abused. But stories that I heard from my mom, she doesn’t talk about a whole lot, but things that happened with her and my dad, there was a lot of physical abuse. I didn’t see much of it. He kept it hidden pretty much. I don’t know that he would hit her, but I know that at one point, her rib, she would say it was broken because of how he abused her. And she didn’t go check it out. She had no way to go check it out because he wanted it hidden.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So he must’ve hit her to do that, right?
Nora Bontrager:
I don’t know. I don’t know how it happened, but something, yeah. I can’t tell you because I don’t know the details.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
When you and your husband were talking about in the community where you thought that they were open-minded, and it turned out they weren’t, and you guys still wanted to pursue this new relationship with God and this thing that you had found, what were the options you discussed? Because you probably realized you were going to have to leave the Amish community.
Nora Bontrager:
We didn’t realize that until after we lived in Michigan for a year and a half. I remember before moving out there, my husband briefly mentioned leaving, and I was like, “No, no, we’re not doing…” It was out of the question. I shut him down hard. So there was no mention of that again until after we had tried the Michigan Church and realized that they were coming to us again, the church here, telling us the same things like, “You can’t believe this. You can’t continue.” Then on this path of learning, at one point, they… So when you join church, you get baptized. You are allowed, I mean, so-called allowed to have a voice in the decisions that get made in the church. And they came to us, and they were like, “We are going to have to cut that off for you. You’re not going to have a say in things,” which we didn’t really, anyway. I mean, it just looks that way. So at that point, we were like, “Oh, there is no other path for us to go on except to leave.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How were your beliefs? So other than that you were believing in a God that wasn’t punishing, were there other things that you were believing? What was so different?
Nora Bontrager:
Yeah, so my oldest daughter was born while we were in Michigan, and we had a midwife who believed in healing. The Amish don’t believe in God. It’s weird because I guess they would say, “If you’re sick, God did that to you to teach you a lesson.” The God that we believe in doesn’t do that. He doesn’t make you sick to teach you something. And if you’re sick, you can ask him to heal you, and he can heal you on the spot. We were just discovering some of these things. And my daughter, I was pregnant with her, and I was overdue. And my last checkup, there was an Amish midwife that we would go to in the church there. And on my last visit with her, my blood pressure was really high, and it was dangerous. And so we were like, okay, do we go to the hospital, or do we believe for a miracle here?
And we went home, and we called the midwife that we had connected with who believes in healing and all that. And we talked to her, and we’re like, “Can you help us understand how to move forward here?” And she’s like, “Well, what’s your gut telling you? Do you want to stand for healing, or do you want to go to the hospital?” We want to trust, and we wanted to receive this healing. And we stayed, and the midwife had sent home a Doppler or something to check the blood pressure. And she was like, “Check it later tonight and let me know.” She was nervous about it, understandably.
Anyway, so we checked it later that night. We had just prayed for healing, just like, “God, you can heal this.” And it was normal. It was perfect, my blood pressure. And so we were so excited. We were like, “This works. God does heal.” We gave the midwife a call, the Amish midwife. They’re more liberal in Michigan with phones and stuff, so we were able to call her. She didn’t know what to say. It was such a new concept to her. I don’t know. She wanted to believe it, and yet there was nothing else to do than know that my blood pressure’s fine. After my daughter was born, they did a hearing test on her, and she needed to see a specialist for her hearing.
And we were just like, “We’d love healing for this too.” And we prayed for it, and we prayed for healing. And on the next checkup that we did for her, she was fine. We were just talking about these things to these Amish people, these Amish ministers. And they were very hesitant to hear, reminding us that, “Well, make sure you give God all the glory.” And we were like, “We are. This is cool. This comes from God. How could we have done this? It’s not something that we did. We just asked for it.” They didn’t like that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Stay tuned to hear more in just a moment.
Hi everybody. Ashley here. As many of you know, I got sober at 19 after going to many treatment centers. And years later when my aunt passed away as a result of her addiction, my father and I and our business partner, Iain Crabb, started a telehealth company in 2010 called Lionrock Recovery. We started with a PowerPoint and a dream hoping to help people overcome barriers to treatment like affordability, accessibility, and privacy, which we were able to create in this program that we started. Today Lionrock Recovery, our little PowerPoint treats people all over the world. We have over 200 clinicians, and it’s an amazing program.
We have an intensive outpatient program that has so many different time tracks to fit into people’s schedules and specialties like professionals group, LGBTQIA, trauma and many, many more. We are able to help people anywhere in the world with any schedule, and all of it can be done privately. This is our dream come true. And Lionrock Recovery is available to any of you who have family members who are struggling, or if you’re struggling and you need to talk to somebody, our admissions team is there around the clock for a free phone call, also a live chat on the website. There’s so much there that we’ve worked so hard to bring to you. Please check it out, lionrockrecovery.com, or you can call the 800 number (800) 258-6550. Thank you so much.
So when you guys decided that you were going to leave, what did that look like?
Nora Bontrager:
We talked to a couple of people. One of my first and a half cousins, who was a son of the bishop that I grew up in the church, he and his family had left. So we were in connection with them and the non-Amish midwife that had helped us. So there was two people, just a handful of people that we knew that had left, that they were kind of giving us some guidance and talking us through some things and questions. And one day, we got a little radio in the mail from one of our friends that had also left, and we were like, “Oh my goodness, can we get this out? Is this okay?” And yet we knew it’s okay. Another thing that we had been experiencing was the house that we moved in had electricity, and they had allowed us to keep the electricity for a certain amount of time. And our time was up, and we were just like, “We’re going to be spending so much money to switch this out, and we don’t even believe in it.” So we kept it.
So when this radio came, we still had electricity. We started listening to some of this music and putting CDs in it, and that was a big deal to have music. And we bought a little camera and all these things were still hidden. People didn’t know that we were doing this. I remember we were playing our music one night, and somebody knocked on the door. And we just scrambled to get the radio inside of a closet or something, so nobody would see because it would just be such a big deal if they would find out. Lots of people trying to tell us we’re wrong, and we’re ruining our kids and sending our kids to hell and doing the wrong thing and trying to get us to change our minds and criticizing.
When you’re in such a fragile space anyway, that we were, just babies and learning these things and being so conditioned to follow what people tell us to do and just barely branching out onto our own, it feels very feeble, not super strong in our path. It’s very vulnerable space to be in, and then have somebody like the authorities of the church tell us all the bad things, what we were doing is wrong, and we’re going to hell. We were just trying to believe that we’re not going to hell.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What did discipline look like for adults in the community? If you got caught doing those types of things, what would that look like?
Nora Bontrager:
Well, the first thing that they did for us was cut us off of being allowed to help make decisions in the church. When that happens, it’s like you’re gone. That’s a big move. My husband had worked at a family in the church. They had a sawmill, and this family had teenage boys that he worked with. And they came to us and they were like, “We don’t want you to work with our kids anymore.” At that point, there was not much left to do than just leave. They were cutting us off in so many big ways that were important to us.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What does it look like to leave? How do you leave with kids and in a world you’ve never been in? What does that look like?
Nora Bontrager:
Oh, God, so we moved. We moved back here to Indiana at that point. It was like we left on our way back here. It’s like we were Amish in Michigan, and then we moved back, and we didn’t go to an Amish church anymore. It took me seven months to try new clothes. We just still dressed Amish for the most part, for seven months into having left. We had a vehicle. I didn’t drive until almost a year into having left.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How did you get housing?
Nora Bontrager:
We found a rental here that we moved into. There was a guy whose family also had left years ago, and we knew him. I knew him, and we somehow got connected to him. There was a couple of people that were like, “Yeah, move back. We’ll help you.” The way that I describe it sometimes is like you live on one planet. You know how that planet operates, and you get picked up and dropped into a whole new planet. And it’s like, “There you go. Figure it out.” It’s a culture shock. I remember just living in so much fear of just the world’s going to explode because it felt so overwhelming.
Everybody that I knew had dropped out of my life, and I had to start over with new people, people I didn’t know. I only knew a handful of people at that time that I could talk to and relationships with people that did a life a whole different way than what I was used to. Some days I was just like, “I can’t make sense out of life. I can’t figure out how you live, how you do life, and how to even be in connection with people.” Little things like most people are huggers more so than Amish. There’s no hugs in the Amish. Nobody hugs. And a little thing like a hug would set me off into kind of an anxiety. I don’t even know how to hug you.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
If someone were to hug you, you’d have anxiety because you didn’t know how to hug back or because you didn’t want to be touched, or what was the…
Nora Bontrager:
I don’t think it was that I didn’t want to be touched. It was that my body didn’t know what it is. It’s just so foreign. I had only had a handful of hugs outside of my marriage.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So it felt like extraordinarily intimate maybe.
Nora Bontrager:
Yeah, that’s a good way to put it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What other types of things were like that?
Nora Bontrager:
The first thing that I think is the church that we started going to. There was music. Music for one, it’s also-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
There’s no music in the Amish community? None? Zero. Okay. No singing?
Nora Bontrager:
Yeah, they do sing, but not with music, just their own voices or whatever. So going into a big church full of people that I don’t know, and there’s this loud music, just deafening sometimes. And then it was like a church where they would dance to the music and just be free with how they wanted to move with whatever, or sometimes they’d shout, and it could feel traumatic. Everything that I was used to, we were quiet, especially the kids. The women don’t talk loud. Everybody’s quiet. And at church, the only person that talks is one minister. I mean, they trade off, but a handful of people, men, speak, and then there’s some singing. But everything’s quiet, and I was used to quiet. “You have to shut down. Do not speak. Do not use your voice. Don’t be loud. Be little. Be nothing. Don’t show up. Don’t whatever.” I feel like it’s hard to explain the depth of the experience.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You’re doing a great job.
Nora Bontrager:
Thank you.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Were there things that were so amazing? Were there any of the things that you came and you were like, “This is the best thing ever.”
Nora Bontrager:
I feel that way now. I don’t know that I felt that way in the beginning because of just how extremely different it was. Even driving a car was like, “Yeah, this is so cool.” Because it was traumatic trying to learn how to drive. Now I feel that way. Now that I’m more established more, I feel like I can understand my life a little bit better. And I can sit in my car and just be like, “Oh my God, I have a car. I don’t have to drive a horse and buggy. I can go anywhere anytime I want to, and I’m just so in love with my car.” But yeah, in the beginning I didn’t. There’s not a whole lot that I could feel that way about.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What happened with your relationship with your husband?
Nora Bontrager:
So I would say when we were in Michigan, our marriage was the best that it ever was for some reason. I don’t know why. We were on the same page with things. We were ready to leave at the same time. We were on board, and we were excited and ready. And then after we moved back and we had left, I feel like everything spiraled. And I’ve sat with that, and I’ve wondered, been curious about it. The only thing that I can come up with is such a traumatic change in life, in culture, such a culture shock. We didn’t know how to work together in that, and we spiraled. And we couldn’t find our way out, or we didn’t find our way out.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What did that look like, separating?
Nora Bontrager:
We were together for, after we left, for five years, and then I finally ended it. I came to the point where… I think that also maybe we left for different reasons. Maybe we had a different vision in mind, and I came to the point where I was like, “I can’t do this.” I think that I wanted to really learn how to live this life outside of Amish, change my mindsets, change my beliefs. I want to find who I am. I want to branch out. I want to live a bigger life than this little thing that we were locked into. And I think that he was more comfortable with staying with some of the Amish beliefs, keeping them, and I wasn’t. And so it just created a lot of friction, a lot of frustration for both of us.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What happened to your relationships with your family?
Nora Bontrager:
For a while, the only person that I could talk to with my family was my mom. I would say the only person that didn’t completely maybe reject us at one point or other was my mom. She really, really struggled with us leaving. It was so hard, and it’s still for her. She still cries because I’m not Amish. but in her pain. I think her experience with all the pain that she’s been through, she’s learned how to love through that in her own way. And so she was always like, “Nora, I don’t like what you’re doing. I don’t like it, but I will always love you. You are still my daughter. I can never not love you.” That’s the one thing that I hung on to through the whole thing was my mom.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. And a lot of people probably don’t have that when they leave.
Nora Bontrager:
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I know so many people that don’t. I’m so lucky.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And did your relationship with your sisters come back?
Nora Bontrager:
Somewhat. We can talk. It’s different for either one of them. I had a not-so-great experience with my younger sister recently, but there’s still love. We were so close as kids. We were super close, and I feel like no matter how different we are now and how little we talk and how little we can relate to each other, underneath, there’s some level of that same closeness that we still carry that I’m so grateful because I feel that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What has it been like watching your kids grow up in a totally different culture?
Nora Bontrager:
Oh, it’s been amazing. It’s so amazing. It’s like I get to live the life that I didn’t know I wanted it as a kid, but now I want it for myself as a kid, and I get to live it through them. I get to create something so beautiful for them that I didn’t have, that I don’t have memories for. I don’t have pictures of myself until I was 26. I didn’t get to see the world. I didn’t get to see how other people live. I wasn’t exposed to… I guess, their world is still secluded in many ways, but they’re way smarter than I am. They keep teaching me things that I didn’t know. It’s just super cool to watch them grow up.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Are there things about it that are difficult that you don’t like about it?
Nora Bontrager:
Yes. I grew up without electronics. There was no access to that, so I had to figure out how to live without that, and sometimes I want that for my kids. It’s like, “Don’t even have access to it. Go figure it out. Go create something. Go play. Go do something other than be on your phones or whatever,” which I try to create for them anyway. But I noticed that there’s a big difference in the way that they spend their time versus the way that I… Which I worked, so I don’t know. I want to find a balance. “Go play, go play, whatever.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How old are they now?
Nora Bontrager:
My boys are 16 and 17, and my girls are 10 and almost 12.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What has it been like since leaving the marriage? So you have your experience of leaving Amish life in a marriage and then trying this new life, and now you have the experience of being a single woman in this world. How did things change?
Nora Bontrager:
Oh, God, massively. Leaving the Amish was scary, and leaving the marriage was similarly scary. Probably most women experienced this one there when they divorce or whatever. But that there was this element of having been taught to never leave, or you’re going to hell, and then having my whole family again just not liking the decision that I’m making, and having them all just be so disappointed in me, the pain that creates, knowing that I’m creating that and knowing that I still get to follow what I need to do and then learning how to live. So I also had been a stay-at-home mom, no job, raising kids, doing the Amish wifely duties. That’s all I knew.
And then having to figure out how to create an income, support my kids and myself, being on my own is something I was never… I didn’t see it. I didn’t see people do that. I wasn’t taught anything. I had to figure it out on my own, which I know a lot of people do, but I didn’t know our finances. I didn’t know how to take care of the finances. My husband took care of everything, and I had to figure out how to pay my electric bill, how to pay my gas bill and my mortgage and things like that. How to even actually make a payment, things like that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What did you start to do for work?
Nora Bontrager:
I created my own little house cleaning business. I was like, “My mom cleaned houses when I was a kid and I would help her.” I was like, “I can clean houses. That’s all I know right now.” As far as working at a job or something like that, felt just overwhelming, and I didn’t know how to create that with my kids. My youngest was six at the time, six or seven, and I wanted to be here for them. I wanted to be home enough that I can feel like I’m taking care of them. I’m a mom to them. I wanted to be able to do something that I can also be home. I can leave after they left for school. I can be home by the time they come home. I can kind of create my own schedule with that, and so it’s worked perfectly. It’s been the best thing ever.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What do you think the difference between someone who can make the transition that you made and someone who cannot? Because the reason I ask this question is that so much of what you experienced is substance use, addiction, recovery, where you are dropped into another planet. You want to crawl out of your skin. Everything’s overwhelming. You don’t know what the rules are anymore, and you have to figure it out. And it’s uncomfortable for a while, and then you’re really grateful you got there. And so I’m curious what you think the recipe was for success for you and for the people who make it on the outside versus the people who can’t manage to leave what they know.
Nora Bontrager:
I think part of it is personality, the way that you’re wired. Even as a little kid, would trigger my dad just by doing things that a kid does, and my siblings didn’t. I can’t explain that except who I was, and I didn’t do that intentionally. It just happened, and I think that’s always who I was. I was the shaker, the mover, the trigger, the wanting to find what’s outside of the box, explore a little bit. A lot of people have this idea, even when I was a teenager. People have the idea that teenagers are rebellious. It looked like I was rebellious, but internally I was desiring to know more. I was curious. There was curiosity. I wanted to experience new things. My siblings didn’t try out new things. My youngest sister did though, and that was okay. There was acceptance for her. I think that I kind of paved the way for her, honestly.
I tried out new things, and it’s kind of like you pave a path, or you create a path in the woods with the weeds and the branches. It’s hard work. There’s a lot of prickly branches and things that you need to move out of the way. And for me, it was like my dad’s belief, his religious mindset, and he would go to the ministers, go to the bishop and figure out how to punish me for something that I did. They would all figure it out, and then I would need to deal with that punishment. But then the path was there, and my younger sister came along and walked right through. I think there’s that, the personality thing, just who you are, what you’re willing to go for, what you’re willing to stand for. Some people give in to the fear that it’s created. There’s so much fear that gets created for people who want to leave, all the beliefs that you’re going straight to hell and you’re being punished. And some people can’t move through that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Yeah. What have you done on TikTok? What has that been like for you setting up a TikTok and interacting with the broader world?
Nora Bontrager:
I feel like there was a lot of healing in that. I had to do that. I didn’t do it for anybody except people were asking me, “When are you going to share your story? When are you going to talk about it? Where can we hear your story?” And so that was a motivator, but I realized I’m doing this for myself to get my story outside of me. It was all in here. Just, I don’t know. It kind of felt bunched up and just knotted up. And when I started talking about it, it was like, “Oh, it’s not inside of me anymore. It’s not waiting to be moved. It’s not waiting to be seen and heard.” It was healing. It was good for me to talk about it and for people to see. I felt seen.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Have you helped other people leave?
Nora Bontrager:
When I left during that timeframe, it felt like a wave of people that left at the same time, lots of people. Since then, people that I know haven’t really left, and I don’t know how to reach them. I have this desire to connect with them. If I’m meant to connect with them, if I’m meant to support people in leaving, I know that’s going to happen. I know I’m going to get some clarity at some point. Until then, I am going to show love as much as possible. I’m watching my nieces and nephews. I’m observing. I’m seeing personalities like myself. I’m like, “When you’re ready, I’m right there. I got you.” Not that I’ve necessarily told them, because it would just create a mess, but energetically they know I’m here. If at any point they want to leave, Aunt Nora is going to be there.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, your story is amazing and such a great look into the life of what it means to be Amish and this very tight-lipped community that people see and maybe they misunderstand. And you used so many of the tools that we use when we’re recovering from any other circumstance in life, and it’s beautiful. And I’m super, super proud of you and happy for you and the life that you found. If people want to connect with you, where can they connect with you? What’s your TikTok handle? Do you have other places as well?
Nora Bontrager:
Yeah, just Nora Bontrager on Facebook and Instagram. I don’t really have a website. I do have a website that I’m a part of. It’s called perfectlybalanced.co, where they can find me with the work that I do. I’m teaching human design right now, doing some coaching. Everything’s in there if they want to connect in that way. But other than that, my Facebook, Instagram, TikTok is what I got. It’s Nora Bontrager.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on here and sharing your story. I really appreciate it, and I’m rooting for you.
Nora Bontrager:
Thank you, and I appreciate having this space. It’s similar to what I was saying about the TikTok thing that I get to actually share my story. It’s out of me. Yeah, so thank you.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Absolutely. Well, Scott.
Scott Drochelman:
Yes.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I don’t think I could make it in the Amish community.
Scott Drochelman:
I will second that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Hey, it would be really interesting to see. No, not now. That wouldn’t be interesting. That would be really predictable.
Scott Drochelman:
Very bad.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Very bad. Where’s the hum stinger? Hum springer.
Scott Drochelman:
Rum springer.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Rum springer. The humdinger.
Scott Drochelman:
Where’s that guy’s humdinger?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I would be in trouble. Okay, so actually I’d be like, “You can build this. You are hot. How do you do that?” Yeah, [inaudible 00:52:53]-
Scott Drochelman:
How do you do that?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What a skill. That’s impressive.
Scott Drochelman:
What a skill.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wow. No. If you take a personality like mine or the child that I produce that’s also like mine, and you put that personality in that growing up in there, how much of that you can suppress. I mean, I’m sure a lot, and I would bet that Nora has that. That’s the version of what that would look like, but I do wonder how much of that you can nurture out.
Scott Drochelman:
Actually, an Amish community, it’s another movie that I’m signed up to produce.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
They did that. It’s called The Simple Life, remember? Paris and Nikki?
Scott Drochelman:
I do remember that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It would be a way funnier version of that.
Scott Drochelman:
Yeah. That was all just kind of like-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, like, “Ha-ha, they have money, and they don’t know what to do there.”
Scott Drochelman:
Ooh, let’s bang some farm guys and whatever.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did they bang the farm guys?
Scott Drochelman:
They were into some of them, I think.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, okay. I never actually watched that.
Scott Drochelman:
I think I watched a couple episodes, and I think they probably had some model plants that they’re like-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, for sure.
Scott Drochelman:
“… Oh, look at this guy, just happens to live here and be a farmer, who’s just a stone-cold fox.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Totally, totally. It would be a way funnier version.
Scott Drochelman:
Oh, yeah. I would watch this documentary a 100%.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
A 100%.
Scott Drochelman:
I don’t know what would even happen. I mean, you would just be fighting everybody, right?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It would be a fox in a hen house. Okay, so am I married? Do I go? Is this pre-marriage or…
Scott Drochelman:
Definitely pre-marriage.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, pre-marriage.
Scott Drochelman:
Because you have to-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It won’t be funny now. I’d just be like, “I’m so tired.”
Scott Drochelman:
Well, I mean, it’d still be… Wait, we go to bed here at eight o’clock? This is rad. Ooh. Yeah. “
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Exactly. [inaudible 00:54:34]. Yeah. They’re like, “Wow, this didn’t go how we saw. She’s really taken to it.”
Scott Drochelman:
“She started to go to bed at six o’clock. She hasn’t even finished her nighttime chores, and she’s in bed again.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
She’s like, “This is the holistic life I was looking for. Wish my kids had this work ethic. You know what? Fuck it, we’re coming.”
Scott Drochelman:
“She doesn’t actually work. She just kind of dances around with the chickens all day.” [inaudible 00:54:54].
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I’d be like, “You can’t kill my favorite chicken. We’re not going to eat Carl.” Yeah. I’d be like the tie myself to the tree. Tie myself. “You’ll have to take me too.”
Scott Drochelman:
“Oh, you’re back. You’re back with the elders again. Sorry, Ash.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, exactly. What the fuck?
Scott Drochelman:
“We just have a standing Tuesday appointment for you, just to…”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Honestly, going to some of the treatment places that I went to felt like that. It felt like they were dropping me into an Amish community and then expecting me to follow the rules, and it was as puritanical as I had ever experienced. They were like, “Here, we’re going to have you live in a house with boys and girls your age. You can’t have sex with them. You can only talk to them and only about appropriate things. You have to cook, and you have to clean. You have to take care of yourself, and you have to go to meetings and not drink or do drugs.” I can tell you what that looked like when I was 17. It got-
Scott Drochelman:
Went well.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Well, I mean-
Scott Drochelman:
Went Well.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Listen. Listen, it didn’t not go well.
Scott Drochelman:
Sure.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It went. It went. Of all the programs, I graduated one. It was the 30-day one. Every single other one, I was asked to…
Scott Drochelman:
Withdrew forcibly.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Dishonorably discharged.
Scott Drochelman:
Dishonorably discharged.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I was dishonorably discharged. Okay?
Scott Drochelman:
Did someone serve you papers of some kind that said this? Was there a ceremony?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No. There were no ceremonies. That would’ve taken too long. They wanted me to leave faster.
Scott Drochelman:
“So there’s a car outside. Get in it.”
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. One of them threw me out on the street when I was… Seriously, with all my shit. I’d been there 10 months. They threw me out.
Scott Drochelman:
10 months? And they kicked… Wow.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And they threw me out on the street. This was stupid. This was actually not called for at all. Of all the that I did, hooked up with all these people, all the shit, just absolute fucking terror. They kicked me out because I told them I wanted to go down the street to the 30-day program, and I was willing to come back. But I wanted to go down the street because I wanted to do some specialty work there on love and sex addiction and codependency, and they threw me out. I swear to God.
Scott Drochelman:
Dude.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That was the [inaudible 00:57:09], and so I literally had to take all of my bags, 10 months worth of shit. And you know me. I have more shit. My overnight bag and my one-month bag are the same size. So I had to walk down the street and get myself a hotel. I think I was 18 at the time. I had just turned 18, but I stayed sober, but it could have been a disaster.
Scott Drochelman:
Well, I just felt so happy for Nora in her story because even just hearing her talk about what it’s like raising her kids, where they have all this choice and they’re able to figure out who they are and all this, you can see it. She just lights up when she’s talking about it, and so I don’t wish the hardship that came along with some of those early parts of her life. But it certainly seems like she’s doing a lot now and is really trying to create an amazing situation for her kids, and who she’s offering to be for her nieces and nephews is amazing. So I just find her story to be really inspiring and one that I can relate to.
Because whether or not you were born in an Amish community, the feeling of being in a place where you don’t fit, and the longer I go in life, the more I find everybody feels like an outsider. The people who identify as outsiders drastically outweighs the people who feel like insiders, I think. And so this might be an example where there’s some things that might be more extreme than what people are used to, but that feeling of being born somewhere where just you have this curiosity or you have this part of yourself that you want to express that you can’t, I think is something that a lot of people feel, including myself. So yeah, beautiful story.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And man, what guts it takes to leave and go to… I mean, she went to another planet. She went to another planet, the planet she grew up on, worlds away. I can’t even imagine. And she did that, and then the marriage wasn’t working, so she was willing to leave that. I mean, that’s real courage and real guts, man. I got to tell you. To make those life decisions and to really go against the grain, talk about the road less traveled, and to be willing to learn. “I don’t know how to do this. I’m going to learn. I don’t have the skills. I’m going to clean houses. That’s what I know how to do. I’m going to do this. I’ll make a business.”
It’s just really impressive, really, honestly. It’s the type of courage that I hope my children would have, that I would aspire to have because going against the grain is… I see the circumstances in myself about going against the grain, and I like to think that I would do it. And I battle it, man. I definitely want to be. Certainly today, in my life today, I’m like, “I want to be part of…” I like the ease of going with the flow. I like that. I enjoy that. It’s hard to fight against what the norm is, so really, just really impressive human being.
Scott Drochelman:
Yeah. We hope that you found her story to be as inspiring as we did, and we’re really thankful she was willing to share her time with us, for sure. This week, we are rooting for you as we always are. If you find yourself in a situation where you’d feel like you don’t fit or whatever, there are people out there for you. You maybe just haven’t found them yet, so it’s sort of our ongoing thing is just try to find the community where you do fit, where your people are. Ashley, anything you want to leave the people with this week?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yes. If you enjoyed this episode, please, please, please check out our others. We have over 250 episodes on every topic you can imagine, including Q&As, experts. We have it all. Please check out our five seasons worth of content, and also we would be so grateful if you would leave us a review, a comment on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It makes a world of difference. It is podcast currency, so if you are a regular listener, if the spirit moves you, please go. Leave us a review and a rating. It really does make a difference for us and helps us bring you more and more great content and get it to more people, so thank you. We’ll see you next time.
Audio Recording:
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