HOW TO CHANGE YOUR STORY

“I tried spirituality as a remedy for feeling inferior, but there’s not enough meditation in the world to fix an old story that says, ‘I’m a piece of shit’”

WHEN I WAS FIVE, my parents divorced. Shortly after, my father met Sandy, first at a cocktail party and then again at a tennis league for single 30-somethings. She was brilliant, anxious, fast-talking, and from old money. They were engaged within two years.

Sandy was a perfectionist and held us, her family, to the same standards. She placed yellow Post-it to-do lists around the house, sent my new stepbrother and me to etiquette classes (our dog wasn’t spared, either), and could cut me to shreds with a single remark and gesture to my father: “He’s wearing that?”

I understand now that if Sandy was hard on us, she was even harder on herself. But when my