What keeps me in therapy is having an outlet for the stresses of work and family life. My T is able to hear anything about my work, whereas I have to protect most people in my life from what I hear and deal with at work given the trauma that is at the center of all of it. And because I work within a system that is horribly broken and unjust.

Among the positive things that I have learned, perhaps at the top is that there is always a deeper way to explore what I think and feel, an appreciation for being able to see things in ways that are more flexible and open than I used to be. That much of my pain and suffering, notwithstanding an abusive childhood, is the product of my stubborn ways of being and thinking. Being able to be fully present in my life rather than chattered up by past feelings and history, at least some of the time. Being proactive in changing things in my world that weren't working for me; having support to put myself first and honor my creative spirit.

I think my greatest accomplishment in therapy, which was made easier by the fact that I'd been in therapy for five years before my spouse became terminally ill, was to move through the crush of grief (still in process five years later) with my personhood still intact, to be able to be there for my then-middle school kid in his, and to have not just spontaneously combusted from the horribleness and pain of it all. To have been able to use therapy as a way to process a big grief rather than hiding under a rock for the last five years is something I'm proud of. It was f*ing hard as hell becoming a single mother unexpectedly and all the past losses that came out of the historical woodwork as a result. As Elton John puts it, I'm still standing. There were other choices.