T said to try not to analyze my session but I want to write about it because it's already feeling hazy. She didn't want to use the way I felt about her for the incident to focus, but something from my past where I felt shut out. Somehow we got to my mother, and how she and I didn't communicate when she was dying. T wanted me to imagine how it would have been if it would've just been the way I wanted. She says our brain can be rewired even if it's not the original experience. It doesn't know the difference between reality and fantasy even when we do. I wish there had been handholding and hugs and exchanges of "I love yous". There was none of that.

T and I agree that my mother did not shut me out deliberately, but our relationship was one of non-connection. I shut her out. There was never a closeness the way I feel towards T.

T also had me visualize my mother not telling me something I wanted to know, as a teenager, even if that never happened. What surfaced from today is that I felt alone during my life. My mother was there "too much" but I didn't feel connected. Rather than being incidents that shut me out, I never felt totally IN. I lived in my own world, not being able to share with those closest to me.

I told T I liked emailing her this week and that I could see a trade-off between the connection with her being good, and therefore not needing her to answer my question.

At the end of the session she told me I did good work; my brain got us to where it needed to go. I feel sad about missing saying goodbye to my Mom when she died, and missing the kind of connection I needed. I can see why I want T to meet those needs. She says the visualizations of what I wanted will help me.