I think if I had known the amount of attention and the intensity of response that my last article for Salon, “I could’ve been a Duggar wife: I grew up in the same church, and the abuse scandal doesn’t shock me,” was going to receive, I would not have had the courage to press “send” on the pitch. I assumed that it would be just one more article; one more pebble thrown into the giant ocean of online media. I didn’t imagine that it would cause anything more than a very short-lived ripple. I was very wrong.

“Since the article was published, I have received thousands of messages from people who have said: ‘I thought I was the only one.’”