I let my anger rise to show me where I had betrayed myself. And, of course, it had started young: I had learned—through my parents and the culture at large—the fallacy that love is conditional. I had trained myself to believe that I didn’t deserve love unless I was doing for others, that my worth was tied to my output, my ability to service people’s needs, that focusing on what I wanted was selfish, an instinct that should be suppressed.
