I didn't plan to write a book. For a long time, I didn't even plan to tell anyone what I'd been through, not in detail, not the parts that mattered. I talked around it with my closest friends the way you do when something is still too raw to hold up to the light.

What changed my mind was smaller than I expected. I was helping a friend through something similar, sitting with her one night while she asked me the same questions I used to ask myself, and I realized I'd already done the work of answering them, just never on paper, never in a way anyone else could use.

So I started writing it down, first for her, and then for whoever else might need it. The ten questions came from notes I'd kept for myself. The journal came from a notebook I used to hide in the bottom of a bag. None of this was designed from the outside looking in. It came from the inside, out.

I wrote the book I wish someone had put in my hands back then. If it does even a fraction of that for you, it was worth writing.