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Living atthe Edgesof You

Boundaries, Identity, and Learning Not to Disappear

You do not have to disappear to be valuable.

HardcoverPaperback

Meg Steinschauer

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There is something uniquely disorienting

about waking up one day and realising

the person you have become

is not quite the person you set out to be.

Chapter 1, The Blue Pillow

Part One

Learning to Disappear

Before it was a habit, it was a way of staying safe.

She learns that being low maintenance makes her easier to have around.

Part Two

Learning to Carry

The workplace did not create those instincts. It gave them status.

A workplace does not need to know your childhood to make use of what your childhood taught you.

Part Three

The Body Speaks

It kept the account long after the mind had closed it.

A house knows what version of you walks through the door.

Part Four

Returning to Yourself

Not a recovery. A slow, deliberate coming back.

What it is about

Disappearing is quiet work.

It happens in the spaces where care, competence and expectation collide.

Living at the Edges of You traces how a girl who learned to survive by becoming small grew into a woman the world praised for holding everything together. From a childhood shaped by rooms no adult was watching, through a relationship that counted her smiles and called it love, into boardrooms that renamed her vigilance professionalism, Meg follows the pattern of self-erasure to its breaking point.

What follows is a return. To a body that had been keeping score for decades. To a marriage that taught her nervous system what safety feels like. To two daughters she refuses to hand the old inheritance. To a life with edges.

Written with warmth, dark humour and hard-won psychological insight, this is a book for every woman who has been called strong while quietly wondering where she went. It offers recognition, language, tenderness and a steadier way to ask: where do I end, and what am I still allowed to choose?

No quick fixes. No five-step promise. A chair pulled out at the same table.

Paperback and hardcover, out now, with worldwide shipping.

Who it is for

Maybe you are tired in a way sleep has not fixed.

Maybe you have become so practised at holding everything together that nobody notices how much it is costing you.

Maybe people call you calm, capable, reliable and steady, and maybe those words feel both true and unbearable.

Maybe you have started to wonder where you went.

If you have spent years anticipating what everyone else needs and being called indispensable while quietly losing track of yourself, this book was written for you.

Who am I when I am not holding everything together?

Read it first

The first chapter, free

The Dear Reader letter and Chapter 1, The Blue Pillow, sent straight to your inbox. It is the real beginning of the book, not a trailer for it.

This book touches on childhood adversity, abuse and loss, and holds them with care throughout.

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Notes from the edges

What readers found here

If something in the book met you, leave a note. Meg reads every one before it appears, and only your first name and where you are writing from are shown.

Meg Steinschauer, author of Living at the Edges of You.

About Meg

Meg Steinschauer

Meg Steinschauer is the founder of Connected Assistants, a keynote speaker, and a psychology student based in England. She built her career in high-pressure support roles, working as a Chief of Staff and alongside senior leaders, before realising that the very capability that made her good at her work was quietly eroding her sense of self.

Living at the Edges of You is her first book. She wrote it for her two daughters, and for every person who has been invisible in the role they were brilliant at.

This book is for you, because of you, and with the deepest hope that you grow up knowing you never have to disappear to be loved.

From the acknowledgements, to Mia and Maggie
More about Meg

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You already do the hard work. This is the book that puts words to it.