My first session with T was set about two weeks after we spoke on the phone. I had called and left him a message around this time last year. My son had been really sick all summer and I was a wreck. I was freaking out and I left him a message to that effect. He called me after he got back from vacation and said, "tell me what's going on." I think I was slightly hysterical on the phone.

[I had actually met him several years before when he treated my middle son for a few months]

At my first appointment, I told him I had nothing left to give my family and I went on and on about all of them. Then he looked at me and said, "Where are you in all of this?" And I said, "What do you mean?" [I was thinking, what the hell is this guy talking about] I told him I was right there with him, I was a mother, a wife, a student, etc. He looked at me and told me they were roles we assume. he said, "you were the mover and shaker in your family, so what happened?"

I looked at him and said, "I got lost along the way." I think about this often because the sessions for the first 2 months or so after this were difficult and I was retraumatized early on several times.

There was no intake or forms or anything like that--we just talked and we've been talking ever since. He did ask if I had ever been in therapy before and he asked how old I was. He told me his fee and I pay each week when I go.

That was the beginning, the rest is history.