My two girls look different on just about every level. Big, small, blonde, brown, not even the same species. But underneath all of that they share something (besides me)… they’ve both been really hurt and have the emotional scars to show for it.

When Stella was a puppy she was attacked by a pit-ridgeback mix in a parking lot. The dog tore her up, and while she healed physically, she doesn’t allow most animals too close anymore. She doesn’t trust them.

And when Annie came into my world, she didn’t trust humans at all. What she could tell me through her behavior suggested that she’d been deeply dishonored somehow, but the only remaining physical signs were the white dime-sized remnants of scars on her belly where she’d been cinched up too tight and made to work.

I tell their stories (and mine) of finding trust again in the new book.

But this is what it looks like.