Influencer Shares How She Escaped Amish Family With $24

TLC's Return to Amish New Season EXCLUSIVE First Look!

One influencer risked everything to make a caller life.

Lovina Hershberger, a erstwhile subordinate of the Amish community, fled successful the nighttime successful 2021 from her family’s location successful Iowa, 10 days aft her 18th birthday. She had $24 to her sanction and near down her parents and eleven younger siblings, penning a goodbye note to her household earlier fleeing to a adjacent farm.

“Something about, ‘Sorry. And I'm OK,’” Hershberger told People successful an interrogation published Nov. 15. "I did not archer them wherever I was oregon anything. They had nary mode of getting a clasp of me."

As Hershberger explained, she had ne'er utilized a telephone oregon the Internet before and first got the conception to permission down her Amish manner aft her begetter forced her to discontinue her teaching occupation successful favour of moving connected his sawmill.

“The parents ever determine what you bash with your beingness until you're 21,” she explained, “and my dada told maine that they're not going to let maine to beryllium a schoolhouse teacher again due to the fact that it doesn't wage enough.” 

Additionally, Hershberger noted, "I was bushed of having everybody archer maine however to dress, what to wear, however to deterioration it.”

Luckily, Hershberger’s older brother Joseph, who had antecedently near the Amish community, was capable to assistance her.

The learning curve entering into a non-Amish nine was steep for Hershberger, mostly due to the fact that she didn’t person the basal documentation indispensable for employment.

"Before I could get my [learner's] permit, I had to get my societal information paper and my commencement certificate,” she said, noting her parents kept each their kids’ documentation “locked up” until they wed oregon crook 21. “And those 2 instrumentality a agelong clip to get. You request impervious that you're a existent person.”

Joseph’s aboriginal woman helped Hershberger get a occupation cleaning homes earlier she began to larn however to marque and edit videos connected societal media.

After going viral with her “I’m not conscionable a b---h, I’m a b---h with a backstory” video, which received implicit 9.6 cardinal views and 1.2 cardinal likes, Hershberger began regularly updating her TikTok relationship with videos astir her Amish past. The contented is some lighthearted and besides informative arsenic she answers galore viewers’ questions astir the Amish civilization and posts cooking videos.

Her skillset has besides fixed her a caller relation editing the Amish Rebel podcast with her uncle, a chap ex-Amish assemblage member. And she recently married Eli, a antheral she met successful a communal surviving statement for those caller retired of their Amish communities.

The mates tied the knot successful August and though some of their families were invited to the nuptials, neither chose to attend.

"It's decidedly not conscionable creaseless sailing," Hershberger said of her ongoing attempts to reconnect with her family. "There's decidedly thing betwixt america due to the fact that of what I did. Because they deliberation I'm dishonoring them, and they don't similar the mode I unrecorded my life."