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