Trauma survivors are often called “challenging” when they’re simply asking curious, thoughtful questions. This Step 2 entry explores how emotional illiteracy leads to mislabeling, and how reclaiming curiosity becomes a powerful step toward identity healing.

Some children grow up with a name. Others grow up with a name and an asterisk—a quiet footnote that shapes identity, belonging, and self-worth. This Step 2 entry explores how the “asterisk child” learns to overexplain and how healing begins when you reclaim the whole story.

When I married into his family, I truly believed I was stepping into something beautiful. A big family. Loud, lively, connected. The kind of family I hoped would fill the spaces mine never could.

There’s a moment in everyone’s life when the roles we once carried, daughter, fixer, pleaser, peacekeeper, backbone, emotional first responder, just… slip. Sometimes it’s a divorce. Sometimes it’s distance. Sometimes it’s simply waking up one morning and realizing the person you’ve been performing no longer exists. Roles are loud. They’re rewarded. They make other people more comfortable than they make you. They come with scripts, expectations, stage directions, and an audie