“I realized I didn’t want to die. I wanted the performance to die.” I have spoken openly about experiencing suicidal ideation because I believe deeply that we have to remove the shame from these conversations. For me, one of the most important realizations came after a suicidal episode I write about in both Gilded and Gilt Free. I didn’t want my life to end. I wanted the version of my life built around performance to end. The marriage that wasn’t right for me. The career that wasn’t right for me. The exhausting attempt to be all things to all people, according to rules I had never consciously chosen. So I began asking a different question: What actually needs to die here? That question eventually led me to make some of the biggest and scariest changes of my life. Not all of them paid off immediately. I was broke. I was unemployed. I lived on a friend’s couch. But I was also beginning the work of building a life that was actually mine. In honor of Suicide ...