I've been working with my T for just over five years now. We have done some amazing work together. She helped me learn to trust her. She helped me to learn to start to build relationships with other people. She helped me to grieve for the loss of my Mum and the loss of the Mum that I wish I had had. She became the good enough mother to me, and helped me to reconnect with my inner little child, to take her hand and to take over that role. She helped me to learn how to feel again (though right now with all th se feelings going on I kind of wish I hadn't learnt that!). She helped me to leave my unhealthy and unhappy relationship and she helped me to settle into a new, much better one.

She has been by my side for the last five years, sometimes giving much more than I imagine she ever expected she would have to, and sometimes taking a step back and watching me grow and learn and develop.

We were just staring to work on Childhood Sexual and Physical Abuse, feeling anger and talking about shame (I'm not sure I feel that or not) when Covid came along. We've bumbled around since then, kind of working on it, kind of not. Then she had a bereavement which meant we were out of contact suddenly for six weeks, which was incredibly hard given that I was literally just about to share with her some of the details that have been kept secret all these years (the whole thing has been kept secret, except for her, previous T and my ex husband).

I thought things were getting back to normal when I text last week and we scheduled a session. She has only justt offered slightly longer sessions as we reduced from twice a week to once a week not long ago, a couple of months. I was looking forward to getting back to working on it all again. This feels like the final hurdle. It feels like we are so very close to putting the puzzle back together.

And then I hear today that she is winding down her private practice. That she will stop working from home privately from December. And so we have 5 months left. I'm appreciative of the notice, don't get me wrong, but I am..... I have no idea how I am feeling. Upset? Annoyed? Relieved? Hurt? Shocked? Confused? All of the above?

The only good thing is that I can at least recognise that I have options. I have a choice. I can't choose the one thing that I want, but I do have options as to where to go from here.

I can forget it all and go on with my new life without resolving the trauma. I can go back to my old T (I had a few sessions with her during the last six weeks and we talked about the possibility). I can find a new T to work with. I can get done in 5 months what I can get done and then call it quits.

Again, none of those would be my preferred option and really, I want to know why? Why is she stopping private practice. She only does 1 day a week in that now anyway I think, preferring her other projects instead. She has taken a natural lean that way over the last five years as it is, but I don't think she is stopping those. She is not retiring I don't think. Just stopping private, which hurts. It feels like she can't enjoy those as much. Doesn't get as much from them. Finds them too difficult.

The work we have done is helping me to try not to relate that to 'finds me more difficult' 'doesn't enjoy sessions with me as much as at the school' etc but it's proving a difficult voice to counter right now.

Anyway. I'm not sure what I am looking for, maybe just understanding.

I'll see her for the first time in six weeks, on Tuesday, and I hope I am able to talk about some of this with her, but the voice of 'why bother' is pretty vocal.............

This really is the end of an era, and I just want to cry right now.