How to Survive the Ones Who Love You: The People I Became for You Paperback – January 31, 2026

Naledi has mastered the art of being lovable.Not the soft, messy, human kind of lovable. The efficient kind. The kind that never embarrasses her mother, never asks for too much in a relationship, never needs rescuing in friendship, never drops a ball at work. Naledi can read a room in seconds and become whatever keeps the peace. People praise her for it. They call it maturity. Grace. Strength.But Naledi knows the truth: it's survival.Then one celebration forces her carefully separated worlds into the same space, and the versions start to overlap. A harmless story becomes a contradiction. A private truth turns public. A joke lands like a confession. The "easy" Naledi can't keep up, and the woman underneath is tired of paying for love with self-erasure.In the quiet aftermath and a therapist's office that refuses to applaud performance, Naledi faces a question that can ruin relationships or save a life: "When the masks fall, who will still reach for her?"THE PEOPLE I BECAME FOR YOU is a sharp, intimate, emotionally charged novel about conditional love, identity, boundaries, and the slow, brave work of becoming whole. Read more