Bastards

Therapists often talk about quitting, going into some other field. Some normal field, where they aren't flooded with the emotions of others for five to eight hours a day; what I call empathy overload. Most people, even those who aren't therapists, become overwhelmed when friends and family have tsorris (Yiddish, rhymes with floor-dis, means troubles), all that feels unfair.

When the Holocaust is mentioned in a therapy session, it is empathy overload for the victims, even for the survivors, that brings the patient (and sometimes the therapist) to tears. Someone has to change the subject.

The rub is that even if we did change jobs we would find ourselves still feeling the pain, that of the people, the very world around us. Just like you do.

So at the gate, waiting for the plane, I’m looking around, not at the books so much, usually there isn’t time for that (barring a flight delay), but am scanning my fellow travelers, the most interesting species in the zoo, my attention mostly to women, sometimes men. People lose their social persona, that put-on thing, seated at the gate, outside their usual milieu. It is hard not to watch.

At some point I stop. Because there she is.

She’s not making eye contact with anyone, rather focused on a computer, never her phone. She may be wearing make-up, but often goes bare, a touch of lipstick, eyeliner. She may be wearing jeans with a nice blouse, or slacks and a blazer. She’s generally not got much, if any jewelry, maybe a pendant, an antique ring. She isn’t smiling. Her lips are pursed, shoulders back, head held high in that line to board. Standoffish. concentration within, gazing at nothing.

And I wonder, is she thinking about someone she’s about to visit? Her mom, her sister? Is she running from a boyfriend or grieving a break-up? Did she just lose her job? Is she a writer? A middle-manager? Why is she aloof, and is she this way with friends, too? Is she usually sad, or is this just how she seems, beaten? I feel she is, and want to know her story.

It is not such a mystery, this emotional draw to others, random lives at the gate. The brain likes new things, wants to unravel the puzzle of human beings, especially if this is what it is trained to do.

Even if we wanted to leave our empathy sensors behind while on vacation, leave the whole idea of other people and their problems in the taxi, we can't. It is a part of our packaging, noticing the emotional state of anything with a pulse, any living thing. (You certainly don't have to be a therapist to be equipped like this, but it is a vocational plus if you are.) Empathy is a trait, but curiosity an appetite, nourished young. In third grade, there's a girl sitting in the desk on the left, upset about something more than her C-minus. You're dying to know what.

Here, with a random stranger, it is just that, empathy sparking curiosity, but there's no authentic caring. If she were to run to get a last minute coffee and missed the flight, it wouldn't matter to us. Our curiosity doesn't work that hard.

But if our sister or brother   took off for a sandwich and didn't return, didn't make that plane, we would care.  Second to parents, siblings are among the first objects of attachment. We bond with them, are in forced-habitation with them during those early, formative years.

Parents contribute, reinforce those first ties, even orchestrate close sibling alliances, by (1) staying out of the middle; (2) showing favoritism to all, not no favoritism; and (3) forming a loving executive committee that makes decisions. The last is a tight communicative unit that allows input from the peanut gallery, but still makes the rules. Or (4) parents can influence a sibling alliance off-handed, unconsciously, behaving in completely dysfunctional ways, their children close because of the dysfunction. When the sibship is unhappy, people say: Family breaks your heart.

But back to hanging out at the airport.

So when I’m looking around, it looks as if there is at least one person whose heart, whose very identity, has suffered a fracture or two. Not that the hunch is necessarily right; this is just a feeling, an intuition. Maybe misguided empathy. There will likely be no conversation as a validity test. 

Mary Anna King's story: Bastards

But if I wanted to delve, if I wanted to ask about someone's life while waiting for a plane, or anywhere, for that matter, it would be the life story of Mary Anna King.

Lucky for us, she kindly wrote Bastards  and shared. The memoir could be considered bibliotherapy, and like Mess (the September book pic), is extraordinarily well-written. Bastards reads like a mystery. Not what will happen next, but how will these messed up people ultimately turn out? Dead on drugs or as medical professionals, perhaps, in a uniform? How will they pass?

Ms. King won’t talk to you at the gate, for sure not. But to read her story about losing four sisters (!!) to adoptions, losing herself to an adoption,  is to feel unimaginable separation anxiety.

We know what it is like to lose someone to death, to disease. We know what it is like to lose someone to an abusive relationship, watch that someone lose self, personality, to domination. We know what it is like to lose money, to lose a home, possessions, even to lose a loved one to terrorist executions, assassination, airplane and car crashes, to alcohol, to drug overdose, even old age. School shootings. Adoptees rarely tell their stories. Everyone assumes it has to have been the best choice, in the best interest of the child.  

Mary Anna King's story: Bastards reviews

In this memoir we learn, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Feeling what it feels like to lose siblings, either as the one who is taken away from the others, chosen by an adoptive family, or as the one left behind, isn't feeling so good.

Bastards is about what family, what having brothers and sisters, should mean to us.

And as I'm reading it, cover on, I keep flipping to Mary Anna King's picture, just like I do while working, jotting notes, looking up, repeat, or even at the airport, when someone just looks interesting.

So, Ms. King. If you see someone glancing one too many times in your direction at the gate, don't get paranoid. Maybe offer to sign my copy of your book. I could mail it to you with a SASE*.  

therapydoc

* a SASE is a self-addressed, stamped envelope.

Bastards is published by Norton, a company that is really putting out wonderful psychological treatments on difficult subjects. 

January Back Acha'

Yeah, it's been a long time since I've had time to do this, link back to bloggers and readers who link to me or comment below. And I really don't have the time, but you know you make time for the things you like to do, meaning steal time from the things you should do. In other words, my 3:15 canceled, so rather than call people back, which would be the logical thing to do, well, let's do this anyway.

Thanks Tara for guilting me into it. I hadn't responded to this email until now, weeks later, but that's okay, right?

Dear Therapy Doc,

I have recently been given the job of developing and promoting our blog and
while researching this new task to me I have found your excellent blog site.
I am not sure how you go about developing such an excellent collection of
links for your Blogs Roll but certainly something to strive towards!

How can I go about inclusion of my blog?

I add you is all, and finally did. (sunglasses, people, think sunglasses). And to make your own list of amazing blogs, hang around, loiter and read other writers, like . . . .

DaMama Motherhood is Not for Wimps. Find me someone who disagrees. Try.

The Second Road, the best recovery blog.

And Penelope Trunk's Brazenist Career, almost spelled brazenist wrong, seriously brazen.

UK's Community Care Blog World, cuz they care.

The Doctor's Girlfriend (great pugs on the page)


My good buddy Jack at the Shack is kvetching about tuition. Hello.

Opining online simply gives an _____

If you’re dreaming again, in no hurry to wake up, try Wanda’s Wings

There are blogs that like sharing their music, and this one liked my post about a rock star. I wish I could remember her name, Ingrid somebody.

Over at Trench Warfare you'll read yarns about social work in the trenches. It's more than one war, you know. There are so many.

Eyes opened wider, always worth a read.

Totally into The Known Universe, read TechnoBabe.

Uppity-crip might make some people think about disabilities, and you know, we should.

Retriever’s clearly got her head on straight. And that dog. . .makes me nostalgic . Not nostalgic enough to ever get another dog, although I don’t like ever saying never to anything.

Kerro’s Korner’s great, even if there’s a “K” in corner.

Shattered into one piece-- can get pretty, well, shattered, just warning you. But it’s a good shattered.

Sandy Andrews has that picture of the shrink on the Sopranos for her header. Where’d you get that, Sandy?

Tears Behind the Smile blogging about therapy and Ikea.

Calm Acceptance Patty’s got the idea.

Becky has a guard dog, Cricket. I’m new here, but love it.

Lisa Marie Always love a good dysfunctional daze, Lisa Marie.

Syd I’m just fine. The myths about 12-Steps, see his Jan 11, 2010 post is simply fantastic.

Blognut’s mindless ramblings can get poetic.

Mark, at The Naked Soul knows how to tell it like it is. People should listen. He answers the age old question, “Why do people see prostitutes?” It’s a hole in the soul, is what it is.

One Wild Ride links over to my buddy Thriver at the Thriver’s Toolbox. April the Optimist tells us that surviving s not easy, but there’s support out there.

Mean Something is about literature (it should mean something).

Lou at Subdural Flow has what to kvetch about. Kids are a challenge, never easy.

Isle Dance has some unbelievable pics up, as always.

Cassandra recommends books for 2009 at Some are classics.

Zan at My Journey So Far tells us about leaving the Jehovah Witnesses. What a story.

Definitely stop by Café Jeannie and chew a little.

Maha always says, call bells make her nervous. She and a friend, way behind on their sleep, tell us 12 mortifying ways to die.

To learn a little Torah, check out the Rebetzin’s Husband. Where else would you go? /

and while you're at it, try New York’s Funniest Rabbi , not feeling particularly funny lately. So sorry for your loss.

Sissi at is getting it on paper.

Dr. Deb is a wonderful blogger. Looking forward to reading her book.

Jew Wishes / and I also go way back. I get my booklists from there.

My Social Work Network has great daily inspirational quotes/ We could always use one once in awhile.

Miriam L paints! Check her out.

MHMS at Made You Look-- Exactly how it sounds. / a must see.

Special mentions, Seaspray, Porcini, Rachel Z for helping me out with the community crisis, Tzipporah for comments, Margo, and the other Margo my daughter for her occasional snarky comments like, Did you actually post that comment?! A Mother in Israel, MizFitOnLine, Jumping Frogs, Curiosity Killer, and Leora, and to anyone I forgot, kindly kick me in the head, just guilt me with an email.

We're good with guilt.

therapydoc

Friendship Interruptus

It sound silly, but isn't as silly as it sounds. Friendship is sensitive, and it's those interruptions, past, present, and future, that can make it so ridiculously hard. A can't live with it, can't live without it thing.

But that's not the point of the hottest study at UCLA, which is worth talking about, if only for a minute, because I'd like to get back to that friendship interruptus thing. Gale Berkowitz's piece waxes poetic on friends (thanks J and others for the link). We get it, 100%, those of us who are female, about friends:

They shape who we are and who we are yet to be. They soothe our tumultuous inner world, fill the emotional gaps in our marriage, and help us remember who we really are.

They help us remember our past, shape our identities, fill in gaps in other relationships, and more. Laura Cousin Klein, PhD co-author of the study believes there is a biological reason that friends serve us well when we're under stress. Fight or flight, the old stress response paradigm, is a gross simplification.

Actually, cognitive therapists have known that since the fifties, but okay.

I'll paraphrase:

. . .when the hormone oxytocin is released as part of the female stress response, it buffers "fight or flight. Females don't run, and they don't fight, they turn to tending the children and socializing with other women, which in turn stimulates greater oxytocin production, which further counters stress by producing a calming effect.

So it's pretty important that we do what is natural to us, arrange chick flick night.

Or at least lunch. Or dinner. Guys, apparently, because they're guys, don't get this warm and fuzzy oxytocin high because they are guys and their testosterone mitigates its effect, anyway. Whereas estrogen, the hormone that makes females softer in so many ways, might enhance it.

It does seem that men relate less intimately to one another, although some of us would suggest that this is a response to internal homophobia. Whereas the female brain gets warm and fuzzy at the very thought of shmoozing with other female brains, guys get prickly.

Even guys can be intimate, however, we know that, and we see it quite a bit in cyberspace where it's safe and there's less fear of exposure, thanks to anonymity. Having that sixth degree of separation, male bloggers are just like female bloggers, and master whatever intimacy fears they might otherwise face in life stuck being guys.

The study could be interpreted as a biological proof, the one that some of us have been looking for, that women, as a group, are truly superior in fundamental ways. We certainly score better on social report cards.

Can't wait for the comments. I'm ducking.

But you know it's much better to cry with your girlfriends than to stuff your feelings or throw back the Jack with the guys! Well, some of us think so.

All this and Jeffrey Zaslow's story (WSJ, Sat-Sun) about the Ames Girls. Eleven (now 10) women from Iowa have remained close friends for over thirty years. And they didn't stay in Ames, Iowa, either. They kept the mojo working from afar.

I love so many things about this story, but mainly hate that I don't have this, a minyan* of close childhood friends. Mr. Zaslow finds it marvelous, too, that these "girls" stayed a cohesive social unit, for he spent a good deal of time with them to research his book. The book documents their friendship and may imply that the magic that keeps the Ames girls together has something to do with having no issue with the label girls. Whatever the secret, maybe it's a private school or a church thing, I haven't read the book, or all of the article to be absolutely honest here, whatever the reason, we're jealous.

Because it's true that the people we grow up with are the ones who remember. They remember our parents when our parents were young. They remember how we looked, how we behaved. They're the ones who suffered at our sides or yakked with us on the phone until daybreak when our teachers embarrassed us, or boyfriends dumped us, or our parents spleened us or screamed at one another, shaking the rafters. So having friends around ten, twenty, thirty years later is a blast to the past, every time you meet up. Old friends refresh the old pages.

Now really. Why don't all of us have a group of ten or eleven best friends?

Families on the move are partially to blame. The army brats whose parents have to pick up and move to serve Uncle Sam cart their kids from city to city, post to post. And those brats (how I hate that word) sometimes attend upwards seven to ten schools before they graduate high school. The government should find another way, seriously, to stop this slam dunk to socio-emotional health. Friendship interruptus is in the mental health equation, no question.

Poverty is, too. Parents one step ahead of the wolves tend to be on the move. Bye, bye, class of 2010. We're heading south where it's warmer, west where nobody knows our name.

And then there's normal adolescence, for so many of us. Those of us who suffer from being normal might behave in unorthodox ways as adolescents, one might even say anti-social ways. We get depressed and withdrawn, difficult to socialize with, but we also get curious. And when that happens we want to know what other people are like, want to befriend new kids, ditch the old.

Dropping old friends was an occupational hazard for some of us, not only as adolescents, but as younger children, too, and is thought to be part of the developmental growth process. It isn't smart to ditch people, but some of us do it anyway, can't cop to that girl scout motto, Make new friends, but keep the old; one is silver and the other gold.

And we know which ones are gold.

And when the new kids get boring there are others to replace them, there always are. So kids moves on, socially, don't always care or look back. Until ten, twenty, thirty years later they stop and say, Where did everybody go?

Moving from one peer group to another can be painful to the ones left in the dust. Teenagers, ten-year olds, don't have farewell lunches or termination discussions. They just drop each other. It's assumed if I don't call you that I don't like you anymore. It's painful and it's mean, but this is how kids are.

We have to watch this in the blogosphere because as our social circles grow, it is inevitable that bloggers will feel "dropped" when in fact there is no disrespect, no one is being dissed, it just happens, too many friends, not enough time to read one another's blogs and still write our own and occasionally wash the floor.

But we kind of know that our hearts are still in it, the social game, and we feel the love. We're not dropping anyone and the blogrolls roll on. But we're no Ames Eleven.

So much of this cut-off stuff is in the very fabric of our complicated realities, so much so that parents should warn children:

Life hurts, and it starts with friendship.

There are other reasons that groups of eleven are rare. To even establish such a group implies inclusiveness, the polar opposite of insulting exclusivity, and we need some social maturity, lots of it, and basic human kindness to keep adding members to clubs. Don't you kind of wonder, Who did the Ames Girls leave out?

Once I joined a choir and it was fabulous. We all so enjoyed it until, one day, a new singer joined us, and this person sang so loudly and so off-key that it was impossible to keep the choir going. We had to stop singing, the director had to make up a reason she couldn't work so that we could all save face. But that's social maturity, if not to the extreme, the nth degree.

Social maturity in friendship, keeping friends, having friends, is hard to muster up if you grow up in a family that is incredibly dysfunctional, chock full of neglect and/or violence. It's more likely that you'll be shy and insecure, that you'll develop some bad habits, too. Some of us become aggressive, like our parents, or jealous, insensitive, dependent, avoidant. These are casualties of having lived in emotional chaos.

And we don't want to invite anybody home, let alone eleven others.

In this position it's pretty obvious why having friends feel like a stretch. Friendship requires trust, more than a little risk. The skittish among us don't have that. So we don't have the friends to lose, let alone drop. And those of us who learn to be aggressive sometimes garner aggressive friends. And when we outgrow the tough skin, when we want out of the gang, well, there goes the Top Eleven.

Which brings us to another top-notch way to kill friendship. Get sober. An addict who loses the desire to hang around with people making love to their bottle of beer, will lose them, the beer drinkers. There might have been a history of years of drinking and smoking, shooting and sniffing and BAM! a person decides this isn't the healthiest way to live and off to a Twelve Step meeting he goes and never looks back.

Well, maybe not never.

And don't tell me they weren't good people, the people making love to the bottle of beer or the stick or whatever. Just because people have an addiction doesn't mean they have no feelings, have to be thrown away. I know it feels that way at the time, and surely they threaten sobriety and the whole nasty episode has to happen. But then they're gone, and for all we know, maybe they're sober, too. And you can't repair a relationship just because you say I'm sorry. (check out theSecondRoad.org for more on getting sober and making new pals in the process)

I just hate cut-offs, is all.

Do we have to keep going? Do we have to talk about the fact that as soon as women get engaged they gradually begin to dump their single friends? Or when they have their first baby, or first set of babies, they don't even know where they left their phones, let alone remember your phone number? Or how when they get sick and who doesn't, in one way or another, or depressed, they get introverted and hide, and sometimes, don't you hate this, some people have the audacity to die, to abandon everyone, not just us, to suicide, no disrespect to those who are no longer living. They got sick or were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Or went off to war.

So what I'm saying here is that we're drawn to stories about the Ames Girls, and to Sex in the City, and Friends, and the women on Desperate Housewives, I should say some of us are, because these female clusters have figured it out, how to make and how to keep friends, and we know, at least those of us who are female, how fan blanking tastic it is to have them.

I'm sure there's already a Hallmark holiday in the making to honor friendship. But for those who have lost them, the feeling is going to be bad, just like it is on Mother's Day, because of that oxytocin deficit, and half the time, seriously, nobody's saying goodbye

therapydoc

*minyan rhymes with gin-gone is a quorum of 10 Jewish men.

Season Closers: Friendship

Warning: May contain spoilers.

Like many of you, I've been watching way too much TV this week. It's the end of a very short season.

So to make up for it, I thought a little extracurricular cleaning might help. Having emptied the refrigerator this morning, I yanked the blue plastic trash basket from under the sink. You have to toss the science experiments. Underneath the pipes I saw a little rust and definitely, crud.

The kitchen was already in disarray. It couldn't hurt to attack the cabinet, too.

It's not rocket science, understand, so your mind drifts off. Mine drifted to the two shows I watch religiously, Desperate Housewives and Boston Legal.

Last week's cringe on Desperate upset me so much that I almost swore off the show forever. A little girl emotionally blackmails step-mom Lynette Scavo (Felicity Huffman). Lynette, always the sympathetic character, will go to jail for child abuse in the closer because of this manipulative, unlikeable kid (Rachel G. Fox is perfect) .

She really creeped me out, even though her character and the story line didn't ring true. So I didn't want more, but I said to myself, You're tougher than this. Watch the finale.

The truth is that television is kind of new to me. I watched it as a young person, as a little kid, then checked out. We had shows like Leave It to Beaver, Andy Griffith, Lassie, Mr. Ed, and Father Knows Best, shows that reflected the hopeful mores of the time. Plots didn't vary much. A kid gets into trouble, the parents (or animals) help resolve it, and everyone whistles at the end.

When I checked in again, television was mostly people taking off their clothes or shooting at one another, and nobody rode a horse or loved a dog. So what was the point?

A couple of years ago a patient, an adolescent, talked about Gilmore Girls. She really wanted her mom to watch it so her mom could become more like Lorelai. Empath Daught also liked Gilmore so I checked it out and found the relationship between mother and daughter interesting. Rory could see right through Lorelai's issues, and there were many.

So if I watched the show I could say to the kid (or to my daughter), "Did you see last night's Gilmore?" and we could talk about it.

And I loved the stuff with Rory's grandparents. Lorelai had cut them off because they didn't accept her as different, or so she always thought. Lorelai stayed angry at Richard and Emily, so that conflict kept my attention; that and counting everyone's drinks. (Edward Herrmann and Kelly Bishop are totally watchable and wonderful actors, which certainly helped).

So yeah, I got hooked. It was the entry drug.

And sure, I broke down and watched the two-hour season finale of Desperate on Sunday night. I set the VCR so that if I couldn't stand the cringe I could tape the show and watch it another time, fast forward through the stuff that upset my equilibrium. But the show was pretty good, the ending a real winner.

The enactment of spousal abuse, the whole Katherine sequence (Dana Delaney, so good) is amazing. You can watch this at ABC.com whenever you want.

And last night, well, my mother reminded me that Boston Legal would be on, so hey, who am I to lose the recreational intimacy of discussing that with Mom?

So there I am, cleaning under the sink, and I realize that both shows ended (stop right here if you don't want to read the spoilers) with messages about friendship.

Look here! the networks are telling us. You people are getting better. You want friendship in your lives. Sex and violence? Sure, we can provide that, too. But what you really want is friendship and we know it. So we'll give it to you. You get it here. We'll give you friends. Live vicariously.

What we want are friends.

Listen to this amazing dialog on last night's Boston. Background, first.

Alan Shore (James Spader) is in a huge disagreement with his best friend, Denny Crane (William Shatner) and they're about to go head to head in the courtroom on opposite sides of a case. Alan, in the hallway, overhears their mutual partner, Shirley Schmidt (Candice Bergen, my hero) tell Denny that Alan is very competitive. He's so competitive when it comes to his work, and this case is work, make no mistake about it, that he will take no prisoners. He will crush even his best friend to win.

After the commercials Jerry Espensen (Christian Clemenson, brilliant as the lawyer with Asperger's) argues with Alan about something immaterial. Alan has always been Jerry's arch support. But lately, they've drifted apart.

Alan, always the mentch, has already tried to make peace with Denny and failed. Now he wants to make peace with Jerry. He alludes to the fact that they have drifted apart over the past year. They're not as close. He misses him.

Jerry makes light of it. You can tell he's very nervous but he tries to play it cool and says, "Work! It's work! I have so much work, and you have so much work. We're both busy working and that's just the way it is. Back to work."

Alan doesn't move. He thinks awhile, then says, "I never thought of myself as a person who put work before friendship. But it seems I do."

Jerry looks up. He gently replies, "Friendships are like little gardens. We plan to tend to them but always seem to put them off until next week."

Pretty good writing for television, no?

Alan and Denny make up, too, at the end of the show, and leave their scotch on the balcony to go fishing, perhaps camping, who knows? They can do what they want. They can work on their friendship if they want. It is their choice. The two of them walk arm in arm in the streets of Boston in the middle of the night in their Coast Guard jackets and those silly plastic or rubber pants you wear when you're about to walk into a river to fish.

It is a great scene. The type of scene that makes us wistful for that sort of freedom.

That, only days following the Desperate closer. The Desperate epilogue takes place five years later, following the drama, and the wives are seen playing cards, Gabby (Eva Longoria, such a star) has gained a lot of weight and has two little plump daughters, maybe two and five. Susan (Teri Hatcher) is married to a hunk we've never seen before (I haven't). Lynette's children are older, more difficult. Bree is back with Orson. And Katherine is among them. She's one of them now.

We know that the writers will start next season with these themes, children who are out of control, sex, family tension and desperation. We also know, that they know, that we're glad these housewives have each other.

So there I am, under the sink, going over this stuff. I finish up the scrubbing and get to cleaning up the mess I've made emptying the fridge. I toss an almost empty Dannon yogurt (vanilla, if you must know) into the trash then fish it out. I've used the yogurt as a starter and made my own, surely more fattening and worse for you, but better.

Rather than throw out the container, I'm thinking that I should wash it out and use it for my yogurt. Then, when I see it in the fridge, I'll know it's yogurt, not mystery food.

Somehow (so me), while washing it out, that foil at the top slices my left index finger.

No panic, no pain, I move to the bathroom. The blood drips into the sink (you're reading popular media so you don't mind a little blood, right?) and with my good hand I get out the BandAids. It's getting a little difficult. The paper on the first BandAid sticks to the adhesive and the second BandAid gets wet. Things aren't going so well.

In my head I'm wondering, sheez, do I need a stitch? I begin to really regret this stupid idea, using a Dannon yogurt container when I have a houseful, no joke, a house full of Tupperware.

Then somehow, I remember Lillian.

It's her fault I made yogurt.

When I was in college as an undergrad, Lillian taught me two things. She taught me to make bread, and she taught me how to make yogurt. These are invaluable skills and may have exceeded in utility far beyond whatever I learned in the classroom.

We lived in a university student co-op (all women) and I was the R.A. She was one of the only really mature kid in the house, although I loved them all the same. Lillian, from a tiny farm town in Illinois taught me how to make bread the old fashioned way, no dough hook. I use one now and bet she does, too.

So here I am, thinking about Lillian probably for the first time in many, many years, wondering where she is, what she's up to, wondering if she's married, has children, maybe grandchildren. For all I know, she's no longer alive.

I let her go. I just let the friendship go after school let out. No idea where she is now. I think I remember her last name, but there must be a thousand women with that name (last name starts with an L, maybe you know her).

So I ask myself, and you probably do, too, How do we let this happen? Don't we know as much as the television producers when it comes to the importance of people?

You have to wonder.

therapydoc