Validation Feels Like Oxygen, So Why Is it Choking Me?

What does "being liked" actually mean to you?

Is it the quick hit of a text replied to in seconds after you sent it?

The sigh of relief when someone agrees with your opinion and smiles engagingly at you, like "Wow, yes, me too!"

Or is it the exhausting, quiet choreography of making sure you never ruffle a single feather in a room, reducing yourself to shallow subjects and small smiles?

For me, it was all of those, plus finally feeling like I was appreciated at the job I was giving so much of my life to…

The Hook

Meet Sabrina.

A young, competent corporate accountant at Miller & Croft Financial, and a textbook recovering people-pleaser. 

She was raised on a strict diet of compliance, taught that being agreeable was the ultimate fast track to success.

But lately? The currency isn't spending. Her job stresses her out, her manager is a nightmare, her family thinks she’s married to her desk, and the guy she actually likes keeps leaving her on Read.

She is completely exhausted from forever seeking validation and getting so very little of it.

Until a late-night, desperate Amazon purchase changes everything. 

Enter The Validation Detox Journal—a 28-day boundary bound in paper that forces Sabrina to face her loudest inner critics, drop the toxic mental scripts, and finally take back control of her own self-worth.

But just as she starts to stand on her own two feet, the universe tests her new boundaries in the most disruptive way possible.

At a mandatory corporate mixer, she meets Julian. He’s mysterious, devastatingly handsome, and effortlessly sexy. 

He’s the first person in years who doesn't leave her on read in person—he actually listens.

For the first time, Sabrina isn't performing; she’s just being. And the spark between them is pure, high-voltage electricity.

There's just one massive problem. 

Julian is hiding a secret that could throw a devastating wrench into their budding romance. He isn't just a guest at

the party.

He’s Julian Croft—the ruthless billionaire heir to the entire enterprise, who is determined to systematically restructure and downsize Sabrina's entire department by the end of the month.

Can a woman learning to trust her own intuition survive a corporate audit, a family intervention, and a romance with the man holding the pink slip to her career?

This is a raw, deeply relatable story about breaking a lifelong addiction to approval, dismantling the scripts that keep us invisible, and finding out what happens when you finally stop letting other people vote on a life they aren't even living.

Turn the Page

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