One of the first things I was taught in grad school was to guide people gently away from asking themselves “Why?” and to instead ask themselves “How?” and “What do I do now?” As an anxious, people pleasing, fledgling therapist who probably wanted to do right by my professors, I emulated this. After all, “why” was supposed to continue a maelstrom of self pity, one that we were told to avoid if we wanted to really help people. “Why” would get people stuck in the quicksand of navel gazing. We were told that the “why” wasn’t helpful to self exploration. Even more so, “Why me?” was self aggrandizing, and enlarging of a client’s importance in their own story.

There’s a special grief in losing our friendships. That birthday text you stop expecting. The drives by the restaurant with the special memories from dinners long gone. The empty Friday plans that for so long had their spot secured. The pang of stepping on that empty space once filled with love and laughter, is so very dear.

People often ask me what it’s like being a mom. When I tell them it’s like living with a low level depression, those who don’t have kids are kindly worried. Those who have kids, solemnly nod their head. I don’t worry about it, though it surprises me sometimes (okay, so I guess we are crying when she stands up on her own for the first time). But it’s true. The sadness is deep and it’s there and I don’t imagine it leaving anytime soon. I’ve never felt so comfortable being so sad. And extremely, deeply, happy. The term, bittersweet, really is such a poignant one.

“Insight is the booby trap of therapy,” Lori Gottlieb writes in her beautiful memoir, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. Ironically, this is what feels so good in therapy. We love finding new connections and connecting the dots in our own stories. We love discovering the reason why we’ve responded to our kids and husbands in anger. We want to unpack and share the information. But oftentimes we don’t know where to go with the information.

The worst introduction you’ve ever heard

The last time I wrote was in May 2016, for my class called “Writing for Publication.” I sashayed after class into the warm sunset of my approaching DTS graduation and surely thought, “I’ll write tomorrow.” I was twenty-four years old. What a sweet idiot. (Thank you for everything, Dr. Glahn.)

So over eight years later, here we are.