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

There are moments when reading a memoir feels less like reading someone else’s story and more like being quietly given permission to tell your own. Reading If You Would Have Told Me was one of those moments for me. While John Stamos’s life story is not the same as mine, the courage it took for him to speak openly about some of the hardest parts of his life, with raw honesty and without hiding behind perfection, was incredibly powerful. There was something deeply beautiful in