A four-year-old sits on a hot Mississippi curb, clutching a pink suitcase, waiting for the fake family her mother called to take her away. If you recognize that feeling, this book was written for you.
Suzanne Groves spent five decades as the scapegoat child of a covert narcissist, performing goodness to earn love that was always being recalculated. This memoir navigates emotional neglect, gaslighting, and the invisible wounds that leave no marks but shape everything. It does not offer tidy resolution. It offers something rarer: recognition.
Understand the patterns of narcissistic parents and toxic family dynamics
See your own experience reflected in a story of survival and complex grief
Navigate the weight of being a caregiver for parents who never truly cared for you
Reclaim your identity after years of parentification and emotional abuse
Begin healing from family trauma without needing the apology that never came

Raw, darkly funny, and achingly honest, this memoir proves that surviving such a childhood without losing your heart is its own remarkable achievement.
"Suzanne Groves explores, without excuses, the challenging relationship she had with her father. Her recollections of the minute details and reactions to her interactions with him are vivid and evocative of the deep desire she had to gain his approval. An approval she never got, no matter how hard she tried." -Katharine O'Connor, Ph.D., LPC