Determined to Survive Mary's Shunning (Paperback or Softback)

"Determined to Survive Mary's Shunning", after Mary's Shunning is the second book about the true story of a girl surviving sexual abuse, rape, and her Mennonite Cult family. She learns how to live in the world and to help herself heal.

"Running away from my sexually abusive life was daring and created a whole new world for me. The train ride to Philadelphia was like traveling into another space where I faced new challenges and tragedies. I found freedom by turning anxiety into curiosity. Overcoming the fear of being followed led into a bouncing life full of so many new things. I was so excited about this big city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania that I never wanted to leave. I was free of the life I lived in the first book of Mary's Shunning." Approx 63,000+ words.

Mary's early life story is a horrific tale of child abuse, rape, incest with no one to believe her or anyone to turn too. As a teenager, she escaped with nothing in order to survive. This second book is about her discovery of the world outside the very closed Mennonite community. How basic things worked you and I take for granted, how living can be fun. All manner of people cross her path, nice, generous, giving, but also mean, and treacherous. She has to contend with the family trying to find her and drawing her back in. Gradually building new friendships and getting counseling, she comes to a point where she wants truth and recognition from her family.

I've known Mary for 35 years. In her you find obvious scars, but also a determination and pure grit to make life a better experience and sharing that with others.

Angelica Hammer

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The author, Mary Ranc, was born into a Mennonite family on a farm in Lancaster County, PA, USA during the Great Depression when sugar and gas was rationed towards the end of World War II. This book is the result of notes she wrote throughout her life for the last 60 years. Her education was limited to only subjects permitted by the church/cult with no mention of wars, holocaust or politics. Certain words were eliminated from the health book that named female or male parts of the body. She was not allowed to go to high school because she was forced to leave school after the 8th grade to work on the farm, unlike her siblings who were all allowed to go on with their education.

Living on the farm was hard work, but there were joys coming home to kittens to play with along with her little brother. When he was separated from her; that is when things happened to change her world. She feels a kinship to Holocaust Survivors because she was beaten and abused, always lonely, suffered from hunger and threats of abandonment and death, never knowing if she would live or die.

However, she went on to get her high school General Education Diploma when her daughter was in high school. Mary then went on to become a Licensed Practical Nurse and take college writing classes, authoring poems and short stories. Working with terminal patients in the hospital she was interested in being a "Death and Dying" nurse. She had several careers after nursing and was always writing notes about what was happening in her life. Her strength was challenged again in her marriage in the second book of Determined to Survive Mary's Shunning Part 2. After much therapy, healing, learning, working and recovering from the traumas of her childhood, she is still shunned by her family to this day.

Mary Ranc now lives in rural France with her daughter, where she feels safe and loved in the late years of her life. She wants her story to help others who have gone through this to find health and happiness. It may be found after searching for the truth and will stay with you until you begin to talk and get some help. But please do it.