Over breakfast several weeks ago, a friend told me something I didn’t want to hear.

It wasn’t that her words were unkind. Far from being unkind, they were filled with evident compassion and love for me.

She wasn’t trying to force anything. She wasn’t trying to change me. She was, quite simply, asking me to consider being kinder to myself.

—

My friend’s words sank in deeper and deeper over the hours and days that followed our breakfast.

I came to see that she was right. I was pretending to mys...