Echoes From Amish Country: Voices Of Hope

The church parking lot in Holmes County was already filling when Lizzie and I pulled in.

Women in plain dresses, women in jeans, and women in dress slacks moved steadily toward the doors carrying coffee cups, purses, notebooks, and homemade snacks.

Some greeted each other like old friends. Others looked nervous, like they were still trying to decide whether they belonged there at all.

Inside, the smell of coffee and homemade food drifted through the building while women found seats beside strangers who, in many ways, were not strangers at all.

I remember sitting there realizing something uncomfortable:

I was walking into a room full of stories that, for generations, were rarely spoken out loud.

For years, I had seen glimpses of those stories from the driver’s seat of my taxi van.

I have driven Amish women and children to counseling appointments in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Missouri. I have watched Amish men suffer mental breakdowns. I have listened to people cry in the backseat after finally telling someone what was happening inside their homes.

Before becoming an Amish taxi driver, I don’t think I fully understood the depth of suffering that can exist inside close-knit religious communities. Like many outsiders, I saw the beautiful farms, the family closeness, the slower way of life, the homemade food, the peaceful image most people associate with the Amish.

What I didn’t yet understand was that abuse can exist anywhere human beings exist.

And for a very long time, many painful things inside Amish communities simply were not talked about openly.

That is beginning to change.

I first became acquainted with Lizzie Hershberger at an Amish awareness meeting in 2021. These meetings are held for Amish church leaders, parents, teachers, and others who work with children so they can learn to recognize signs of abuse and better understand how to help families in crisis.

Years ago, subjects like abuse, trauma, depression, and mental illness were rarely discussed publicly in Amish settings. Today, some communities are beginning to face those realities more directly.

Lizzie and I became fast friends, and eventually she invited me to attend the Voices of Hope conference in Holmes County, Ohio.

Voices of Hope was founded by former Amish women Dena Schrock and Lizzie Hershberger as a place where survivors of abuse could come together, share their stories, and find hope and healing through faith and community.

To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure I belonged there.

I had not experienced physical abuse myself, and I didn’t go intending to write an article or investigate anything. I mostly went to listen and to better understand the people I had spent years driving up and down the highways of America.

As a taxi driver, you hear things.

People talk when they are far from home.
They talk when they are hurting.
They talk when they finally feel safe enough.

Still, nothing quite prepared me for sitting in that room and hearing women speak openly about things they had carried silently for decades.

Some spoke about growing up in homes where fear controlled everything behind the scenes while the outside appearance looked perfect. One woman described living on a beautifully manicured property where everyone assumed the family had an ideal life, while privately she struggled with shattered self-worth and constant blame.

Another speaker shared about growing up with a father battling mental illness and addiction. She spoke about walking on eggshells as a child, being bullied at school, struggling with depression, and eventually ending up in mental health facilities herself.

At one point, she admitted she had no real dreams for the future because so much of her energy had gone into simply surviving one day at a time.

Again and again, women spoke about silence.

About pretending things never happened.
About learning as children that their feelings were a burden.
About becoming people pleasers because approval felt safer than honesty.

But they also spoke about forgiveness.
About healing.
About faith.
About learning they were not alone.

One thing they said at the conference really struck me:

“Trauma and dysfunction are created by not talking about it.”

I kept thinking about that on the drive home.

There was music throughout the conference. Prayer. Laughter. Women gathered around tables eating homemade food and exchanging phone numbers. Some cried while telling their stories. Others sat quietly listening, perhaps hearing their own experiences spoken aloud for the very first time.

And somewhere in the middle of all of it, I realized something I hadn’t expected.

I recognized pieces of my own story too.

Not physical abuse.

But emotional manipulation.
Fear.
The slow wearing down of self-worth that can happen so gradually you don’t recognize it until much later.

I had come to observe and learn about the experiences of others. Instead, I found myself understanding parts of my own life more clearly too.

That may have been the most surprising part of all.

Before attending Voices of Hope, I think I viewed abuse mostly as something obvious — bruises, violence, broken homes.

What I began to understand there is that wounds people carry are often much harder to see.

Sometimes they hide behind polished kitchens, church clothes, busy families, smiling photographs, and communities that look perfectly healthy from the outside.

And honestly, I think a lot of healing begins when people finally realize they don’t have to keep carrying everything alone and pretending nothing happened.

As Lizzie and I left Holmes County and headed home, I kept thinking about how many people are carrying pain in silence — Amish and non-Amish alike.

Maybe that is part of why gatherings like Voices of Hope matter so much.

Not because they erase the past.

But because they remind people they no longer have to carry it alone.

Have you ever heard someone else’s story and suddenly understood part of your own?

Haley Straw is a barefoot homeschooling mom of six who somehow ended up becoming an Amish taxi driver.

From her century-old jailhouse home in rural Missouri, she writes true stories about late-night Amish rides, frolics, disasters, awkward moments, unexpected wisdom, and the kind of community most people don’t realize still exists. Her stories help readers slow down, laugh a little, and remember what matters most.

You can find her signed books, free Amish-inspired goodies, and more at haleystraw.com

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