A while back, I wrote a piece on Medium about my early experiences as an out ex-Muslim online called An Apostate of Towelie: Being the Only Woman in the Ex-Muslim Chatroom. An edited version of it appeared in Atheist Alliance of America’s magazine, Secular Nation.
I have built a fledgling (perhaps fetal, if I’m being generous) writing career around it. I promote and am a part of organizations about it. I openly talk about it and identify with it. I am an ex-Muslim atheist, loud and proud, unashamed and out, and have been since 2006. And yet, despite my shamelessness, I mentally buried a significant part of my early history with being an apostate of Islam. The very first time I joined a group for apostates of Islam, I defected after just two group chat sessions.
Indeed, the memory might have stayed buried indefinitely were it not for a particular troll who found my writing at Skepchick.