The Mask She Wears was written during a time when therapy asked me to do the hardest thing: slow down and name what I had spent a lifetime avoiding. It came from sessions filled with unpacking, of emotions, memories, and survival instincts that formed long before I understood them. It came from learning the language of feelings I was never taught, and from sitting with a version of myself shaped by a time period that has quietly, but also loudly, influenced my life. I didn’t