This week I had therapy and told T about what happened with my parents a couple of weeks ago--how I told them about repeatedly getting lost on the way home from school when I was little and how this led to their acknowledging some of the great unspokens of my childhood. I had a thread about it:
http://forums.psychcentral.com/showthread.php?t=170455

I only left the last 20 minutes of the session for this, so we were kind of rushed. T immediately got how important the conversation with my parents was, how momentous even--my parents recognizing and acknowledging to me that how they treated me made me terrified of them. And how they wished it had not been that way. T wanted to know how I felt when my Mom said to me, "I should have come to the school to meet you." I told him I felt like she was saying that she wished she had done things differently. T said yes, and shared what he himself felt when hearing this, "Thank you. Thank you sunny's Mom for telling sunny this, before you die. Thank you." He said that moments like these are what Healing is, and therapy too.

T tried to describe what we were doing--sharing these key and healing moments--as a metaphor, and he looked for one I could connect with. He said about 3 of them, but the only one I remember was, "we are standing together in the Sistine Chapel, looking up at the ceiling." I was really flooded and couldn't think in metaphors. As T would say these things, which placed him and me in the outside world together, in the presence of some splendor, it was disorienting to me. I just wanted to be there with him now in his office, like we were. That was the best. I felt like he was wishing us to be somewhere else, like where we were wasn't good enough. I didn't need us to be in the Sistine Chapel looking at the Michaelangelo. As T said his 3 metaphors, he was asking for mine, but I was not able to think that way. (I needed to process, plus the first part of our session had been very emotional and I felt drained). So I kind of brushed them off. I tried to tell him that being there in his office together sharing this with him was like those metaphors for me; how we were was all I needed. Being with him in his office, and sharing as we do, can feel momentous and special and even holy--I didn't say these last words, but it is what I tried to articulate in my flooded state.

Now that I've had a few days, I have processed more and am ready to have a metaphor. I've been thinking of a couple and did feel there was one image that came fleetingly to mind when T was talking metaphors. It's an image that borrows, I'm sure, from countless films and stories (Indiana Jones?). T and I are underground making our way through dark, dank passages and caves--cobwebs, bats, mold, etc. We come to a widening of the path--an underground room--and see an old, rotting wooden chest. We throw back the lid and it is filled with jewels. Together we stand there in the warm light cast by the glinting gold, the sparkling gems.

When you come across a treasure, it is nice to have someone to share it with, someone who appreciates it. A therapist is someone to share treasures with?