The Title That Found Me

A story about titles, traces, and the words that stay with us

Every book has a working title. Mine has had three. Today’s reflection is about the winding path I took to discover the one that finally fit, and the therapist whose presence planted the seed decades ago.

I have changed the title of my as-yet unpublished memoir three times. It started as The Eating-Disordered Eating-Disorder Therapist. Then I worried that naming “Eating Disorder” in the title would limit my audience. On the surface, I didn’t think the title would be marketable. And when I really thought about it, I realized my memoir is about much more than an eating disorder.

It is about telling the truth of who I am beneath the carefully curated facade I hid behind for most of my life. It is about the intersection of my work as a psychologist, my experience as a patient in therapy, and my process of understanding and sharing my full self. It is about the different parts of me, how they developed, and how honesty, self-compassion, and authenticity have changed me.

Eventually I landed on a new title: Therapist, Interrupted. I liked its cleverness: I was, in fact, a therapist interrupted. Anorexia and performance had disrupted my development at a young age, and it took me years to find a new path of growth. The title felt appropriate and marketable, and I stuck with it for several months.

During that time, I worked hard to extract a proposal from my manuscript. Yes, I did things out of order. When I finished the proposal, I sent it to one of my closest friends from graduate school. She had already read the memoir and supported me through both my writing and so many years of living that led up to it. At my request, she sent the proposal to her brother, a player in the publishing world. I held my breath, waiting for his feedback. He would be the first person I didn’t know well to give me real input on my work.

To my indescribable relief, he had good things to say about almost all of it. The exception was the title. His words:

“I think I stand by my completely unsolicited advice that it needs a better title. Therapist, Interrupted makes it almost sound too niche, like it’s being pigeonholed to the subject of therapy. The hat-tip to Girl, Interrupted is a nice hook, but I dunno, feels like there’s a more powerful or evocative title that speaks to a broader audience of general readers of memoir/self-help. To me it sounds more like a chapter title than a book title. Just my two cents though!”

That one made me think. I understood what he meant. The book is about falling apart, yes, but it is also about how I put myself together. The title was clever, but it wasn’t mine. With nothing better, I kept Therapist, Interrupted as the working title and sent my proposal to a potential agent. She seemed to like it, so I stopped searching for a while. Maybe my friend’s brother was wrong.

But the title conversation wasn’t finished. A few months later, I was working with a literary consultant, polishing the proposal, and we had a long conversation about how much of the book is influenced by The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams. I told her how, when I graduated high school, my first therapist, Nancy, the one who helped me through the hardest years of my adolescence, gave me a copy of that book. I cherished it, especially the part where the Skin Horse explains that becoming real doesn’t happen all at once. It isn’t always comfortable. It happens when you’ve been worn down, when your edges fray and your seams show, when someone sees all of you and loves what’s underneath.

From the time I first read it, a part of me knew I would need to let my worn places show if I ever wanted to become real, like the Skin Horse. It would take decades to begin that work, but the book set me on that path.

When I explained this to the consultant, she suggested a new title: The Velveteen Therapist. I liked it enough to rewrite my proposal with that name. I sent it to the agent for feedback, and she said, “Let me think, I’ll get back to you in a few days.” But before she did, something else happened.

By then I was immersed in Substack, writing more vulnerably with each post. Still, it took tremendous courage to publish what was, and probably still is, the most vulnerable piece I have ever written: The Trace We Leave Behind (https://substack.com/home/post/p-170437239). I felt a literal wave of nausea as I hit “publish.” I was sharing a part of myself I had buried for decades. And I wasn’t sharing it with my partner or my current therapist, but with hundreds of people on Substack, and a few of my “real life” people I had let into my otherwise anonymous writing world.

I sat for hours afterward, afraid to look at the responses. What I eventually found was kindness and support, including a short email from the agent I had been waiting to hear back from about The Velveteen Therapist. She had forwarded me my own essay and written just seven words: “Sounds like a book title to me.”

As soon as I read her words, I felt it. Of course. The Trace We Leave Behind was the title. My title.

If you haven’t read the post, it’s about the imprint Nancy left on me. The same Nancy who, 30 years prior, gave me The Velveteen Rabbit. Despite the short duration of our work, despite the anorexic armor I wore, despite my desperate efforts to disconnect from her as I had from the rest of the world, the connection we did make opened not just a career path, but a future path toward healing.

Even so, I knew I couldn’t just leave it at that. The words had come from my story with Nancy, and she needed to hear them in my voice. This time I didn’t send the piece by email, as I had with other reflections. It felt too impersonal. Instead, I asked if we could set up a call, and I read it to her myself. We both cried.

All of our interactions since reconnecting have been powerful, but this was different. It landed in my body. As I spoke, I realized she had been the turning point in my story all along, even though I couldn’t see it then. It wasn’t one phrase or piece of advice. It was her presence, her ability to see through my mask, if only for moments, and meet the real me.

Thirty years later, I was crying with her again, reading aloud the story of her trace. And I understood: connections rooted in honesty and vulnerability leave something behind. The trace of a therapist’s presence that reshaped my adolescence. The trace of a terrifying post that blossomed into connection. The trace of a single email that gave me my title.

What Nancy left with me at sixteen has shaped most everything since: my work, my healing, my writing. It is one of the traces I carry. And now, it is also the name of my book: The Trace We Leave Behind.