Plum
About that viral essay
As it turns out, many of you do care.
A confluence of events led to my publishing that essay. The previous week I’d heard that one of my former colleagues from a different magazine had been fired from The Atlantic. She was my idol. She’d once written fearlessly about her abortion. When I worked with her she always included everyone in ideas meetings, and if someone had an idea, no matter who they were, from the most junior editorial assistant to the researchers, she’d champion them and their ideas. She was fired over what some people claimed was a mistake. But then I also learned that the former editor of The Atlantic who had forced me out of my job, and who had also made what some might consider a colossal mistake at the New York Times that led to his resignation, was in talks to possibly write for The Atlantic. As it happens, I had also just finished reading an article by Gaby Moss about leaving her job and her writing was so direct and unflinching it inspired me to tell my story, in my own voice, finally.
I’d written the story over the years so many times I’ve lost count. I’ve written so many different drafts. I say drafts and not versions because it’s always been the same story, it’s just I’ve written it in different ways, with different starting points with different framing, depending on whatever had triggered me to bring it all up again, and the…
