The girl behind my eyes

Rowan has spent most of their life surviving memories their family would rather deny.At twenty-nine, nearly thirty, they have finally built something that resembles safety: a home more than a thousand miles from where they grew up, a deeply supportive partner, and an eleven-year-old daughter who trusts them with the parts of herself that are hardest to explain.But safety does not erase what happened.Ordinary moments pull Rowan into memories of childhood-a biological father who crossed an unforgivable boundary, relatives who caused harm and called them a liar, a mother whose love was tangled with untreated illness, and an adoptive father whose fierce love could not protect Rowan from every person carrying his name.Then Rowan discovers that their daughter, Emery, has been carrying a devastating secret of her own.Faced with the chance to become the adult they once needed, Rowan must confront the family patterns that taught them to remain silent, protect their daughter, and decide whether healing means forgiving the past-or finally refusing to carry it any further.The Girl Behind My Eyes is an emotionally raw work of autobiographical fiction about childhood trauma, mental illness, parenthood, grief, survival, and the life-changing power of believing a child.