Why this book exists
A focused place to understand what is happening
Two years had passed since Simone last spoke to her mother, and from one day to the next she still could not tell whether she had done the bravest thing of her life or the most unforgivable. The decision to cut off contact with her mother had been the hardest she had ever made, arrived at not in a moment of anger but over years of anguished deliberation, after a lifetime of a relationship that had slowly, steadily harmed her. Her mother was not a monster; Simone would have found it easier, in a way, if she had been. Her mother was, to the outside world, charming, even admirable. But inside the relationship, across four decades, Simone had experienced what the outside world never saw: a relentless criticism no achievement could satisfy, a subtle.
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.
