Why this book exists
A focused place to understand what is happening
Halina is forty-one, and by every external measure she is doing well. What she cannot explain, to herself or to anyone, is why she feels so fundamentally wrong. Not sad exactly, not anxious exactly, but wrong, as though something at the centre of her is defective in a way other people would see instantly if they looked closely enough. Her feelings arrive at a scale that frightens her, going from nothing to overwhelming without any of the intermediate stages other people seem to have. Her relationships follow a pattern she can predict but not interrupt. And beneath it all sits a conviction, older than memory and impervious to evidence, that she is bad, and that the people who like her have simply not yet found out. Halina grew up in a house where.
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.
