It's tempting to see the world as a counselor in terms of us and them, as in they're the ones with the problems, and we're the ones with the solutions—especially as a young counselor. But I quickly realized that the tools I was given to help others were tools I could use to help myself.

Because I didn't trust anyone, thus making myself accountable to no one, the process of recovery was very slow, tedious, laborious, frustrating, and there were many times I lost hope. But it didn't take long for me to realize that this process was exactly what I needed, though at the time I wasn't sure why.

For me, in the beginning, it was just a way to face and overcome the pain that I had called life. It was answers to all the whys I had.

Over the decades, though, it became much more. I began to realize that there were moments that shattered me, incident by incident, but that there were times before any of those incidents.

Times when I wasn't afraid to love or be loved. Times before my heart was broken—times when my heart was whole.

Granted, they were in very early childhood, but they existed. Even when the abuse and neglect began, I still yearned to love and be loved, but pain and disappointment slowly chipped away at hope, till all hope for being loved was lost.

It became a self-fulfilled prophecy for me to keep people away, thus "proving" that I was unloved and, indeed, unlovable. This book takes 100 real-life questions from actual people and endeavors to bring us back to the self-love and self-worth we didn't have to be convinced of before we were talked out of it by the cruelties and pains of life and circumstances.

The goal of this book (and others before and to follow) is to advocate for this and that, instead of this or that. Cruelties and pains have taught us so much, but the goal is to learn the lessons without the price being paid by love.

Healing from pain is beautiful, but the objective is to relearn how we loved before the pain while remembering the lessons pain taught us. .