Reasons the Holdeman Mennonites Stick Together

Reasons the Holdeman Mennonites stick together are: 1. Threat of excommunication, exclusion from their community, and going to hell if they leave. Fear of needing to change your whole life if you do leave, and weighing whether it’s worth that or not (pointed out to me by a friend, if you’re reading this, thanks!) 2.

Trying to figure out my past

I grew up in another world.  We had our own reality.  We purposefully separated ourselves from the rest of the world in every way we could, except when necessary to provide financially for ourselves, because we deemed the world an unsafe place to live.  Our group was a strict Mennonite group also called Holdemans.  So

How Leaving a Strict Religious Group is Like Being in a Global Pandemic

I was telling my family members, who left the Holdeman Mennonites around the same time I did, that the last time my world turned upside down was when I left the Holdemans. There are similarities. Like, Everything that was familiar to us is gone. There’s a lot of uncertainty and grieving. Sometimes we’re not even

Where I tell you about myself

Before I could even write, I wrote my first story. I dictated a story to my teacher and she wrote it down. It was about my friend and I getting shipwrecked on an island. Thereafter, I wanted to be an author. I have heard that the first things you want to be in life are