Why this book exists
A focused place to understand what is happening
Sylvia's daughter had not spoken to her in three years, and Sylvia still set the phone beside her plate at dinner, in case. She was sixty-three, and she had one daughter, now thirty-four, and for the first thirty-one years of that daughter's life they had been, Sylvia would have said, close. Not perfect. But close. And then, three years ago, after a series of increasingly tense exchanges Sylvia could reconstruct only partially and understand not at all, her daughter had sent a long, painful message saying she needed to step back, that she had been hurt in ways Sylvia did not seem able to see, and that she would not be in contact for the foreseeable future. And then, nothing. Calls unreturned. Messages unanswered. Birthdays and Christmases passing in.
The writing is designed to reduce shame, bring the underlying pattern into view and give you practical ways to respond without pretending that every life follows the same formula.
