Older men had determined almost every facet of Emma’s life as a child; they made all the rules.308 A good woman, she was taught, was submissive. It was the rule, the norm. Breaking the rules meant shunning—sanctioned, systematized ostracism. Typically, people are shunned for six weeks, after which they can beg for forgiveness and, potentially, be invited back into the church. Those who don’t own up to their wrongdoings might be kicked out entirely.

Emma had already been ousted from her group, though. She wasn’t going to be submissive any longer.

She gathered all her strength and told the man, “Get your fucking clothes on right now and leave.”

After she returned home from the business trip, she reported the man to the police. (Calls I made to the man and his lawyer were not returned.) Hit by a wave of crashing fatigue, she fell into bed and went to sleep for the first time in two days.

The next morning, she tried to get to work but found herself unable to remember the route she had driven hundreds of times before. She kept making wrong turns, and people honked at her. She called her manager in tears. “I just wanna die, this is so difficult,” she sobbed. “I can’t get to work, I’m going to be late, and I don’t know where I’m at.”

Her boss told her to go to the emergency room. There, she was diagnosed with severe anxiety and PTSD.

At this point in the interview, Emma started laughing—a nervous habit she has whenever something intensely sad happens. “It’s almost like I can’t handle the emotion of it or the actual feelings, the sadness,” she explained.

Growing up, she wasn’t supposed to reveal her emotions. Even smiling in church was frowned upon. Amish women were meek; they didn’t question things. There was nothing to be protected from, so there was no need to protect yourself. “I think that, because I experienced that as my childhood, I’ve never been able to get away or know how to stand up for myself and fight back versus just try to please,” she said. Despite the agony she felt after the horrible balloon procedure, she told her parents it was helping her, because that’s what she felt like they wanted to hear.

The hardest part of not being Amish has been learning how to be less of a people-pleaser. “I have learned to take care of myself first and not worry about how the other person’s going to feel,” she said. “That has been absolutely the hardest struggle for me.”