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

When I first sat down to write Because of Jane , I didn’t begin with a plan. I had started and restarted this story a million times in different ways. But then I saw her sitting in the corner. I began with a presence. Her name was Jane. She had always been there, quiet, waiting on the edge of the bed or tucked into the corner of a room. She was the one thing that never asked me to explain myself. Never asked me to be brave. Never asked me to be quiet, either. So when the sto