I’ve spent years trying to make everyone else love me. I tried to be the girl who said yes to everything, who dressed right, laughed softly, ate less, spoke less, and looked “put together.” I thought ...

I stepped out of a cab in Graz, Austria, at 10 a.m. with five very jetlagged hours to kill before I could check in to my hotel. I had a few options: I could have asked the person at the front desk for ...