[quote=Wysteria;2045051]Wysteria, thank you so much for the understanding and validation that you provided me with in this post. I love that picture, I downloaded it to my pic file, and it's now my background. It does perfectly capture the way I feel about having had this experience, and it blows me away that you were able to get that. Thank you so much for sharing this pic with me.

And I really appreciate what you said about me as a lawyer. I will continue to try really hard to live up to this.

Anne

P.S. Sky, you (as usual) have great questions. I'm not sure I have any answers.

I think the key thing I've learned, in terms of reaching this healing (for both my client and myself), is that you have to really deal with your past. My client has had to deal with her past every time she tells a potential employer about why she has a felony record. Most of the time their reaction has caused shame and fear in her, and she's had to deal with that. She hasn't just denied or buried it. For me, even when I wasn't in therapy, I was consciously processing (not all the time, of course, I'm sure there is some that I pushed back down) some issues from my past as they appeared in my relationship with H. Often times I sorted things out for myself when I was having difficulty with something, and understood its connection to my past. Sometimes I talked with H and/or with a good friend or two. And certainly when I do the work I do, often times my past gets put in my own face when I react to the similarity between my client's and my own. I don't deal with it at the time that I'm with the client, but I reserve it for later as I'm thinking about my work, and sometimes I talk about this to H or a friend. I think that anytime you bring your past experience into your consciousness and either acknowledge that it happened or try to understand its effect on you or figure out that you've moved in your place around this, you are actively healing. In my conceptualizing of what I am trying to do, my past abuse is a page in the book of my life. I am neither obsessed with focusing on that page nor do I need to avoid it. Sometimes I look at it and try to make what I understand more rich and nuanced, or even correct it. Other times I just look back and honor it.

Anne