Stopping to smell the flowers

Finished Wave. Deraniyagala found words for much of what I have never been able to articulate. The dislocation/disregulation/displacement of the systems we thought were normal. It was the perfect book to read before my tune-up appointment with the therapist who has been my fall-back system since 2013. She was enormously helpful. 

She reminded me that my whole system shut down when my three-year-old son disappeared in 1969. She asked me to write a letter to that 24-year-old woman, peering through the window where she expected to find him, finding only dust. Write to that young woman slumped, on a Saturday morning, outside the empty house where they had lived together until the divorce. My therapist asked me to tell that young woman that it's OK for her system to shut down. It makes perfect sense. It's appropriate, in fact. Tell her I'm sorry she couldn't take time out to lie in bed and grieve, I'm sorry she was alone, sorry there was no one to look after her or bring her food or drive her where she needed to go until she could function again. I'm sorry she had to go to work on Monday. 

Tell her what a great job she will do in her long life. Tell her there will be fabulous rewards along the way. So stay alive. She is going to make it. Tell her that: not that it's going to be OK. What happens to her missing child is never going to be OK. But despite that, there will be good days, adventures she can't imagine, wonders. Tell her you're proud of her.