Why this book exists
A focused place to understand what is happening
There is a woman with a small bald patch on the left side of her scalp, about the size of a two-pound coin, that no one has ever seen. She parts her hair on the right, always. She tips her head a particular way in bright light. She sits with her left side to the wall. Her husband does not know the patch is there. She has changed hairdressers three times, moving on each time the sympathy in their eyes became unbearable. And the patch is not from illness. It is there because she pulls out her own hair, one strand at a time, with her own fingers, and has done for eleven years. The word people reach for is the wrong one. They think: nervous habit. They think she must be stressed, or weak-willed, and if she would only relax, or try harder, she would.
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.
