Thank you first and foremost to the people who have offered up their love to me throughout my life. You showed me how to love and trust, you showed me how to be, you listened and forgave incessantly. You were my original, gentle, generous audience when I talked about my trauma in your bedrooms and in dark bars. All of the healing in this book stands upon the foundation you built. Dear friends from today and yesterday, you know who you are, and I love you back.
Thank you to my agent, Jane Dystel, for helping grant me the freedom to write. Big thank-yous to Ballantine Books, Random House, and to Sara Weiss, my editor.
Thank you to Kat Chow for walking me through the whole process of making a book. You were my book spirit guide. Thanks to early advisers Rebecca Skloot, Susan Zalkind, and Isaac Fitzgerald. Thanks to my early readers: Jen Lee, Hannah Bae, Neda Afsarmanesh, Nina Zipkin, Alex Laughlin, and Carolyn Sun. Thanks to people who read this book and gave notes: Mae Ryan, Christine Herman, Daniel Alarcón, Caroline Clauss-Ehlers, Matthew Tedford, and Kristen Brown. Thanks to Syar S. Alia for her great edit. Thank you to Sarah Dohrmann and her workshop, Diving into the Wreck, which birthed a couple of my favorite chapters in this book.
Thank you to Joseph Fridman for help with so much of the science in this book. Thanks to all the scientists, psychiatrists, and psychologists who so generously gave me their time, including Bophal Phen, Daryn Reicherter and Gardner Health, Negar Fani, Wendy D’Andrea, Greg Siegle, Joe Andreano, Becca Shansky, Rick Doblin, Cassie Thomas, Chi Nguyen, Kathleen Garrison, Simone Ciufolini, Linda Griffith, Beth Semel, and Lisa Feldman Barrett. Thanks to Mott Haven Academy for letting me crash their school. Thank you to the many people who suffer from childhood trauma and C-PTSD who shared their stories with me—thank you for your trust, and for opening your hearts. Thank you, Lacey.
Thank you to Jacob Ham and Emily Blanton for your exceptional care.
Thank you to the whole team at the Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism for your support and connections.
Thank you to This American Life for airing “The Favorite” in 2015. Thanks to the co-workers who protected me there. Thank you to Snap Judgment for avidly championing my voice and encouraging me to develop it. Thank you especially to Mark Ristich, who championed me harder than was perhaps reasonable at the time—your investment paid off. Thank you to my high school journalism teacher, Ken Crowther, for giving me the gift of my own story.
Katherine, my oldest friend, thank you for showing me how family is supposed to be. Dustin, thank you for affirming me in all your wisdom. When we were fifteen and I was insecure about being too straightforward, you said, “Can you imagine a world in which nobody told the truth?” Thank you. Jen, thank you for so much positive reinforcement during this process.
Thank you, Tai Koo Ma and Sam Sam, for believing me, for forgiving and affirming me, and for telling me about my history. Thank you, Auntie, for your enduring guidance.
Thank you to Grandma and to Margaret for telling me that I’m easy to love. Margaret, I miss you. Thank you to DiCo, Jimmy, and Katie, for adopting me and treating me like your own. You all are my cheerleaders and co-conspirators. Thank you.
Thank you to the New York Public Library Main Branch, and to Milk and Pull Bed-Stuy, where chunks of this book were written and researched.
And finally, Joey—thank you for taking care of me all throughout the creation of this book. For listening, incessantly, openly, generously, about every treatment, every meditation, every grudge, for washing the dishes and doing the laundry. For your faith, your emotional labor, your thoughtful critiques. For your love. I couldn’t have done this without you.