A reader wrote to me last week. She's doing the work, properly doing it. Boundaries created, old roles being questioned, the whole deprogramming process in motion. (Woo hoo!) And the people around her are not loving it.

Grief for every scrap I have spent my life accepting and calling enough. Scraps of love. Scraps of belonging. Scraps of kindness. Scraps of tolerance - being tolerated, rather than wanted, and somehow filing that under fine. Scraps of money, taken and made to stretch, while telling myself I was being sensible rather than small. Scraps of scraps, if that makes sense. The scrap of the scrap. That's how deep the habit goes.

For most of my life, if someone seemed to dislike me (or even just seemed like they didn't approve of me) I would throw everything I had at fixing it. Every ounce of energy. Every trick I had. I'd twist myself into whatever shape I thought they needed. Break my own boundaries without even registering I'd done it. Smile and nod when I wanted to scream. Say yes when I meant no, and mean it so hard I'd almost convince myself.