“Hello?” Aliza always sounded modulated, but this time I could detect the tension in her voice. She listened to the voice on the other end for a moment, and her face paled a little. “Okay. Let me — I’m on my way.”

On her way? But….

“I’m so sorry,” she said again, looking at me as she stood up. “There’s an emergency, I have to run to the hospital. I know I’m leaving you in the middle, I wouldn’t do this if not for…. I’ll be in touch to reschedule. I’m sorry, I know you only just got here.”

She gathered her things as she spoke, and I followed suit, feeling flustered. Wait, what had just happened? This was my therapy session. But she’d gotten a phone call — something about the hospital….

“Is everything okay?” I asked, belatedly.

Aliza gave me a small smile before quickly escorting me out. “I hope so. I don’t know. I hope so.”

She locked the door behind us and disappeared down the hallway.

I left the building slowly, discomfited. Therapy was a safe place for me, but it was also a place where I kind of let everything go. Where I opened up the mess that was tightly wrapped up in my heart and let all the jagged, broken pieces spill onto the shaggy

Something about the small room with its soft pastel walls and neat arrangement of teddy bears and other knickknacks on the shelves made me feel calmer just from walking inside.

It didn’t always feel that way. I used to cringe at first, sliding inside and shutting that door behind me as fast as I possibly could, lest anyone pass or see or realize what I was doing here. But that was months ago, and now, I’ll even admit that I look forward to Tuesdays at three. It’s kind of like emotional yoga. Or a deep tissue massage for the soul, or whatever you want to call it.

Sure, therapy can be hard work, and yes, it hurts. Sometimes. Maybe even often. But… it’s good. It’s really good. And I definitely feel like I’ve been making progress, although today….

“Yesterday was a disaster,” I told Aliza as I settled down and placed my bag on the empty armchair. “It was like everything we ever spoke about went out the window and I just got it all wrong. I blew up, Batya blew up, and there we were, arguing like toddlers instead of me being the calm one and the adult in the room, you know?”

I was rambling and I knew it, but sometimes, coming into therapy is like opening the lid of a soda bottle after it’s been shaken vigorously. Everything just kind of explodes out in a mess on the floor, and then you spend the rest of the session, well, cleaning up.

Aliza was listening intently, head tilted to one side, compassion in her eyes. At first, I’d wondered why she was so quiet, until I realized that she was simply letting me talk, without jumping in to rescue me or steer the conversation.

When I stopped for breath, Aliza said, “It sounds like you had a really rough time yesterday.”

I reached for a tissue. Why did coming to therapy literally, like, flick a switch and turn on the waterworks? Maybe it was just nice to have some sympathy for a change. After Batya stormed off yesterday, Aryeh gave me this look, like he felt bad for me but this was totally my fault, and then he took Batya along “for the drive” when he drove out to do the grocery shopping later on. So that they could spend the whole ride talking about me, I’ll bet.

She would never come in the car with me if she didn’t absolutely have to.

And I still don’t get how this all happened.

“I just feel like such a failure,” I mumbled, looking away from Aliza and fixing my eyes on the wall behind her.

She waited a beat and then said, “Can we look at that part, Sari? This ‘failure’ part that keeps on coming up?”

I gave a watery smirk. “I knew you’d say that.”

She offered a small smile, but didn’t get sidetracked. “So—”

There was a buzzing sound from the small desk at Aliza’s side. She glanced at it, looking taken aback, and I followed her gaze.

“I’m sorry, I must have forgotten to turn my phone on silent—” she reached for it, looking puzzled, and then the buzzing stopped and started again. It wasn’t coming from the phone in her hand.

“I’m sorry, Sari. Give me just one moment.” Aliza stood up, rummaged through her pocketbook, and pulled out a second phone. Now I remembered — back when we started, she’d told me that she had a second line, for emergencies only, and that only her husband had that number. If there was a genuine emergency during a session, she said, she would have to take the call. But, she’d told me at the time, that had only happened once during years of practice, and there was no reason to worry it would happen again.

And it hadn’t — until now.

“Hello?” Aliza always sounded modulated, but this time I could detect the tension in her voice. She listened to the voice on the other end for a moment, and her face paled a little. “Okay. Let me — I’m on my way.”

On her way? But….

“I’m so sorry,” she said again, looking at me as she stood up. “There’s an emergency, I have to run to the hospital. I know I’m leaving you in the middle, I wouldn’t do this if not for…. I’ll be in touch to reschedule. I’m sorry, I know you only just got here.”

She gathered her things as she spoke, and I followed suit, feeling flustered. Wait, what had just happened? This was my therapy session. But she’d gotten a phone call — something about the hospital….

“Is everything okay?” I asked, belatedly.

Aliza gave me a small smile before quickly escorting me out. “I hope so. I don’t know. I hope so.”

She locked the door behind us and disappeared down the hallway.

I left the building slowly, discomfited. Therapy was a safe place for me, but it was also a place where I kind of let everything go. Where I opened up the mess that was tightly wrapped up in my heart and let all the jagged, broken pieces spill onto the shaggy floor rug. I needed Aliza to work through them with me. I couldn’t pick them up myself and just take them home to my brooding teen daughter and the frustrated husband caught between us.

And yes, everything else, too — all those memories and the parallels and the whys and the hows and the little girl inside you that Aliza likes to talk about.

I didn’t drive straight home. No one was expecting me back for a while, and maybe a short stroll would help calm my nerves.

It felt weird entering the park without the kids or even a walking partner. I veered away from the playground, full of mothers and children, and headed for the shady path around the perimeter. As I walked, my heart rate calmed a little. Hey, I could do this by myself, for free, huh?

I wondered what had happened with Aliza’s emergency. Hospital, she’d said. Was it a child? Husband? It sounded like it was something bad. In a way, it was weird to think of my therapist as someone with a family — life, emergencies, and crises of her own — but I guess these things happen. Even to therapists.

I would be understanding about the aborted session, I decided. Aliza was a very dedicated therapist; she’d be in touch later to reschedule, fit me in for an extra slot, maybe even this week.

BY

the next evening, though, I wasn’t so calm anymore.

Summer vacation was just no good for Batya — or for me. As much as I told myself I wouldn’t, we ended up entangled in arguments; she was asking for such unreasonable things! What was I supposed to do? And then Aryeh kept trying to give me his sage advice, until I just snapped at him, too.

“Maybe you should take care of the kids all day, if I don’t know how to parent.”

“I didn’t say you don’t know how to parent,” Aryeh said, heaving a long-suffering sigh. “I’m just saying that I think Batya needs you to—”

I waved a hand. “Please, I don’t have the headspace to discuss Batya anymore. If she would only be a bit more grateful—”

I was saying, thinking, doing everything wrong. I knew that. But we were caught in a quagmire, and I needed help, real help, to get out of it.

I knew where to get the help I needed. The only problem was, she’d disappeared mid-session and hadn’t yet surfaced.

Maybe the family emergency was something really serious?

By the time Aliza’s name appeared in my email inbox, I was taut with tension. I clicked on the email too fast.

Hi,

I’m sorry to let you know that I will be unavailable from today until the end of next week, as I am sitting shivah for my mother.

I apologize for the inconvenience,

Aliza

I was bcc’d on the email; clearly, it was a generic message sent to all her clients. Oh.

I wasn’t sure what I’d expected, maybe some sort of personal note apologizing for leaving mid-session, and checking in that I was okay. After all, who more than my therapist knew about my struggles with my daughter, with my marriage, with everything? But I felt bad for thinking that, because clearly, Aliza had other things on her mind right now.

I swallowed the twinge of hurt and hit reply, spending several minutes composing and deleting and tweaking the text of an email to express my condolences and wish her HaMakom Yenacheim. I thought she’d appreciate the gesture, especially in light of the fact that it was my session that had been botched in the process.

I waited for a while after pressing send, but there was no reply.

I

didn’t realize how much I’d been relying on therapy to get through the week — especially now during vacation — until Aliza was unavailable.

The number of times I’d made a mental note bring this up in therapy and felt a pang, wait, no therapy for another week.

The amount of times I’d wanted to send Aliza a text or email sharing a frustration or victory — she’d always maintained that she was happy to receive them, and would reply if and when she could, or hold it until the session. I used to take advantage of it all the time, it was a great way to ensure that I could capture the essence of what I wanted to discuss while it was burning, and unpack it in session to gain insight for the future. But now, I didn’t want to email, and for sure not text. It just felt insensitive, given that she was sitting shivah.

As the days passed, I felt myself getting increasingly out of sorts and snappish. Therapy was a real release for me, like a reset button, and going without it for a while — missing two sessions, really, because we’d barely started last week — was taking a toll.

The week seemed to stretch endlessly, and when Shabbos finally rolled around, I was kind of relieved. This was it, I’d made it; my therapist had been out of reach for what, ten days, and I’d survived.

I knew she’d have a backlog now, but maybe she’d be able to squeeze in a longer session, or fit in two next week. There was so much I wanted to talk through, figure out. And then my parents called, confirming they would be coming to us for Succos (Succos! Who could even think that far ahead!), which sent me into another whirl of the overwhelm-resentment-guilt spiral. Of course Batya had to make some comment about how she hated giving up her room for guests, which made me see red, because she only has that room — that spacious, gorgeous bedroom with the en-suite bathroom — on condition that she gives it up for guests. And she’d agreed to that when she asked to move into it instead of sharing a room with her younger sister.

And I knew I was overreacting because I was so stressed out, but still, seriously? Can’t a 15-year-old be more reasonable? When I was her age—

Oh. Right. That was the whole problem, according to your-inner-child Aliza.

I wondered if I should email Aliza to confirm we were on for Tuesday, or just assume she was back on her regular schedule if I didn’t hear otherwise. Maybe I’d send a text on Monday to confirm.

Turned out, she beat me to it. On Sunday evening, I got an email — another bcc, so it was clearly sent out en masse — with the subject line Upcoming sessions.

Hi,

Thank you all for your patience.

Unfortunately, for personal and family reasons, I have to take some time off work, and will have to cancel upcoming sessions for the next four weeks.

I will be in touch after that to restart.

I truly apologize for the difficulties this may cause you,

Aliza

F

our weeks.

Four more weeks.

And she truly apologizes, how lovely.

I was… I was reeling.

I needed therapy. Now more than ever. We were in the middle of so much and I was in that vulnerable space between having opened the proverbial can of worms and being totally helpless to put it all back together on my own.

It wasn’t like I could find another therapist in the meantime. Therapy didn’t work like that; there needed to be a relationship, a connection. Aliza knew my backstory, my family life, she knew me. It had taken a few months to scratch the surface and begin to really dig deeper.

And I couldn’t be the only one. She specialized in trauma and attachment issues; what were her other clients feeling? How could she do this to me, to us?

And it was so impersonal. No acknowledgement of the botched session, no apology for the missing weeks during such a hard time for me, no thank you for the email I’d sent her during the shivah.

I shook my head. I just didn’t get it. It wasn’t like it was such a terrible tragedy, was it? Aliza’s mother couldn’t have been that young; wasn’t this the way of the world? And if it really was so hard, she could go for some help herself. Surely there were other ways to deal with a loss than to abandon everyone who was relying on you with barely a moment’s notice?

A

ryeh actually felt really bad when I told him what had happened. We had our disagreements, sure, but even he thought that Aliza was good at what she did, and sometimes, when I shared new insights after a session, he was surprisingly supportive.

“Maybe you can ask her for a one-off session? Even over the phone? Just to sort of wrap things up and give you some coping mechanisms to use meanwhile?” he suggested.

I didn’t want mechanisms meanwhile, I wanted my regular therapy slot back now, but he was right, I should at least try to take what I could get.

This email took two days to compose. I wanted to sound understanding and not needy, but also convey the urgency of the situation. Like, I really did need it, just to get through the next few weeks.

Eventually, I sent off a draft that sounded as good as I could make it, asking Aliza for a Zoom or phone session, just in the meantime, to help me figure out some basic steps to manage the weeks ahead.

When Aliza replied, a day later, my heart jumped all the way up to my throat.

Hi Sari, she wrote.

Thanks for reaching out. I understand how challenging it is to be left without our regular sessions, especially without any warning, and I’m sorry for that!

That being said, I’m not able to hold sessions just now. If anything changes, I will let you know right away.

Aliza

If I could tell Aliza one thing, it would be: I understand that you lost your mother, but it’s been two weeks, and you have a responsibility to the people who rely on you. In this field, when you’re dealing with lives, how can you just abandon us for weeks on end?

Aliza

There’s nothing like a termination session to give the term bittersweet a whole new meaning.

I’d been seeing Chaya Moller for several years now, and it was incredible to witness the changes she’d made, the way she’d flourished and opened up, overcome the reticence and the coldness and the seething anger that had simmered just below the surface to move past her demons and create a beautiful new future for herself.

We were holding a termination session because she was moving on: moving away, a new home, a new start. I knew she might be back here and there, maybe for a Zoom session or a call, but this was the end of an era for our weekly meetings.

I would miss her. I really would.

“It’s been a privilege and a joy having gotten to know you on your journey,” I told Chaya sincerely. She gave me a self-effacing smile and tried to dismiss it, but I didn’t let her. “Really. You’re an unusually deep, special, worked-through person. And whoever marries you will be one lucky guy.”

She took a deep breath and gave me a real smile this time. And that was the culmination of the nachas.

When the session ended, Chaya lingered for a moment, and so did I. There weren’t really any words; how can you put a journey of transformation, of self-discovery, of what often entailed sheer, brutal, teeth-grinding and heart-shattering hard work, into words?

And then the door closed behind her, and I had the luxury of a few minutes to myself before my next client.

Sari was always on time. She was also always poised and dressed to perfection, one of those clichéd women who you’d never imagine struggled with anything, who no one would dream was coming to therapy. But the line about everyone having struggles you know nothing about? It’s true.

Today, Sari wanted to speak about her daughter — again. I got that, it was her presenting issue, after all. But there was so much more to it, so much we were taking painstaking steps to uncover, a childhood of parentification, of parents anxious and grieving over the loss of an older sibling Sari never even knew. The years of stepping in to fill that role, and more, and more, always trying to be enough, never feeling like she was.

Today, I want to encourage her to shift the focus from the content — another argument with daughter — to the process, the feelings that came up for her, the story behind them.

But just as we’re about to dive in, my phone starts buzzing.

I was sure I’d put it on silent; I always did. And when I picked it up to check, I realized it was on silent. Which means that it was my second phone that was ringing, the phone I’d bought myself after one disastrous day a few years back when my son was rushed into hospital with acute appendicitis. My husband had been out of town, and I hadn’t checked my phone for around four hours, as I’d had a bunch of back-to-back sessions.

That memory still gives me the chills. My mother had stepped in — she was the emergency contact for my kids’ schools, and she’d taken over the situation — but my son had been whisked into surgery, and I hadn’t been at his side.

To me, it felt unforgiveable, and since then, I’d implemented my new policy: main phone on silent, second phone — only my husband and mother had the number — was on vibrate. Just in case.

It had never been used. Until now.

My heartbeat quickened. What happened? Was everything okay?

It was my husband, Levi. “Aliz? Sorry to interrupt your sessions. It’s your mother. Hatzalah just called me, they found her. They’re on their way to the hospital with her but it doesn’t look good. I think you should come.”

Hatzalah? Found my mother? But what, what, how?

I had a million questions and my brain was thundering and my heart was racing and I could barely see.

“I’m on my way,” I managed, and somehow, somehow, told Sari that I had to leave, I was so sorry, we would be in touch.

And then I ran for the car, and drove like a maniac all the way to the hospital, my heartbeat a thundering cannon of doom inside me.

Would I be too late?

S

he was gone.

My mother was gone.

I didn’t understand, my brain wouldn’t compute the information. How could it be? It made no sense. Ma was young. She was healthy, active, vibrant. Just yesterday we’d schmoozed on the phone, talking about Shabbos plans and whatnot, she wanted to have my kids over for pizza on Sunday, what Sunday, what pizza, how could this be?

There were tears running down my face, something tearing out of my throat. The pizza. My mother had died, and all I could think about was the pizza party that wouldn’t happen. My kids’ faces when I told them Bubby would have them over Sunday afternoon, pizza and ice cream and fries, of course fries, and Efraim had wanted to know if Bubby would put pineapple on the grill, too, like last time, and Ma had laughed over the phone and said sure and oh, oh, oh, I never wanted to see a pineapple again.

Pizza and pineapples. Am I going crazy?

A hand on my shoulder. It was the hospital social worker, a look of compassion in her eyes. “Would you like to talk about it, honey?” she asked gently, and I wanted to toss her out the window. I am a therapist, for goodness’ sake, I didn’t need this. But maybe I did, I was a basket case, crying uncontrollably in the doorway of a hospital room.

But then again, what else should I be doing when I just heard that my mother passed away? I was grieving. I wanted all those clucking nurses and stupid social workers to leave, leave me and my mother and Levi hovering in the background, because if they would all go, just go, then maybe it never happened. Maybe I would turn around and Ma would open her eyes and sit up. She was sleeping, just sleeping, she was tired, that was all! What were they thinking, why were the hospital staff all here, the doctors and their somber faces and people signing paperwork and they were taking Ma away—

I wanted to scream. Maybe I did scream. More hands. More nurses. The social worker again. Honey, I’m so sorry. It’s so hard to say goodbye.

Sorry? She wasn’t sorry. It wasn’t her mother. Was she crazy? No, I was. No, she was.

Levi was on the phone. I could hear him and I couldn’t process the words he was saying, but I realized he was talking to my brothers. None of them lived nearby. They needed to come; of course they needed to come. They needed to know. For a moment I struggled to imagine what this was like for them, hearing the news like this, in the middle of a random sunny Tuesday. Why was the sun shining? Why was the world continuing around us, buses and cars honking and people coming and going like the world hasn’t just shifted, irrevocably, off its axis?

Levi finished on the phone and came over.

“Aliz,” he said, his voice soft. “We should go home.”

Go home? What was he thinking?

“But Ma,” I said, and it came out a wail. And that set me off again. Ma. I couldn’t leave her behind, here in a sterile hospital. I needed to be here, in this room, the last place I ever saw my mother.

The last place I ever would see her again.

MA

and I were always close. I’m an only daughter, and the only child living near my childhood home, and my father passed away several years ago.

Ma was vibrant and competent and busy, but we were her only family living locally, and that meant that we were everything to her. And to be honest, she was everything to us, too. My kids adored Bubby, they were always at her house, she would come by me to babysit, help out, schmooze. Some Shabbosim we’d eat by her, sometimes she’d eat by us, and even if we didn’t do the seudos together, we would visit in the afternoon.

If I had a hard day, a hard week, Ma knew, and she’d be at the door with a kugel or a cake or a weeknight supper, complete with soup and dessert. She remembered every birthday, every milestone, and celebrated everything as if it was the most special occasion in the world.

And she was so wise, so knowledgeable. Ma, with no degree and no training and no social work credentials; she just understood the kids, helped me figure out hard stages, she got it intuitively like she spoke the heart-language most people have to work hard to learn.

Picking up the phone to call Ma was like breathing. It was something I just did, needed, lived with, and lived by, without even realizing.

How could it be that I would never pick up the phone to call her again?

I

don’t remember leaving the hospital. Patches, entire hours of time, were somehow excised from my memory. Time must have passed because suddenly my brothers were there, my kids were home, Levi was busy with arrangements and something about a levayah (hearing the word made me bawl for another hour). In the back of my mind I was vaguely aware of my kids, anxious and shocked, clinging to me, needing me. I was a therapist, I knew what they needed, but I just had nothing inside me to give. I left them to Levi — to break the news, to try be supportive — while I hunkered down in my room and cried.

My children. They were so close to their grandmother. She was almost a third parent to them. And now she was gone.

“Aliza?” Levi was knocking on the door, sounding flustered. “Aliza, Brachi’s screaming. I think she really needs you.”

Brachi, my one-year-old, my baby. I unlocked the door and gathered the sobbing wet piece of chubby yumminess into my arms. My tears mingled with hers. My baby wouldn’t even remember her Bubby. She would never know my mother’s voice. My mother would never see her grow up.

She would never be at my children’s weddings.

It felt like every minute, another layer of searing, agonizing grief was emerging.

Levi was amazing. He did everything; I didn’t even know what there was to do, but he was doing it. And taking care of the kids, my brothers, the calls with the chevra kaddisha.

At some point, Levi asked if I’d canceled the rest of my clients. Canceled? Clients? I looked at him, dazed.

It was like I’d forgotten they existed.

Was I supposed to be seeing someone now? Did I have clients waiting outside my office, knocking in vain?

I literally couldn’t remember.

I checked my appointment calendar. Phew, Sari had been my last appointment of the day, but I had a neat lineup of clients tomorrow.

I texted them that there’s been an emergency and I needed to cancel. And then I turned off my phone. Because the only person I wanted to speak to, so badly, was never going to call me again.

S

omehow, the next day, after the levayah, I managed to draft a formal email to all my clients, letting them know that I wouldn’t be working for the next week. There was a flood of kind messages in response, condolences and so sorry to hears, but I had nothing to say in response, no strength to even lift my fingers.

And I needed strength to somehow sit through a week of shivah, just me and my aunt on the women’s side, and so, so many people coming to sit, to talk, to comfort, to ask stupid questions, to make ridiculous comments, to cry.

It’s not like I’d never sat shivah before. But when Tatty had passed away, Ma was there. I’d sat with her, and she’d cushioned me from the grief, wrapping her arms around me as we cried, sharing memories, gracefully steering conversations….

Now it was just me, me and quiet Aunt Pearl.

I didn’t want to entertain or see or speak to anyone. I just wanted to sit and be immersed in the grief, the sheer endlessness and hugeness of it.

And while there was part of me that was still in therapist mode, watching and analyzing — oh, so that’s what they mean by brain fog, did I seriously put my glasses in the fridge — most of me was, plain and simple, falling apart.

When I found something of Ma’s in my closet, when I noticed the cake dish she’d brought over last Friday with her famous Bundt inside, when my brothers handed me the stack of unopened mail from her house, I just broke. And cried, and cried, and cried.

I’d studied grief. I knew this. I’d even lost a parent before. But somehow, nothing had prepared me for… this.

A

nd then the shivah was over.

As hard as it was while it lasted, there was something reassuring about the fact that it wasn’t supposed to be normal. That I had license to simply sit and grieve, that the whole world knew, that everyone was coming to talk about my mother.

Once it was over, I was just expected to get back to life, as if the world could go on with the sun removed from its place, with everything clouded in a layer of thick, dark, pain.

I had until Monday to get my act together, to get back to myself, back to work.

It didn’t feel possible.

On Friday, I tried to get out of bed. I had to cook Shabbos, straighten the house. The kitchen was a mess, anything and everything and people’s dishes and a random assortment of leftover food in varying stages of edibility.

I needed to take care of things, but when I tried to stand up, I just collapsed.

My legs buckled. I couldn’t stand up. I actually couldn’t stand up.

I’d read about the brain fog and numbness of grief, about how people experience actual, physical symptoms, backache and muscle pain and debilitating headaches and more. But how was it happening to me? It doesn’t make sense. I was a therapist, I was an adult with a family, it wasn’t like my mother was that young.

But, I slowly realized, logic had no meaning in my grief-filled world.

And right now, I simply couldn’t do a thing.

Not make Shabbos.

And definitely not go back to work.

“I

don’t know what to do,” I told Levi. “I need to. But I can’t.”

I thought about my clients; Debby and her struggles with body image and disordered eating; Layla who was hiding traumas that no one knew about; Sari and the way she so desperately wanted to improve her relationships with her husband and oldest daughter. There were so many of them, so many needs, and I felt terrible to let them down, but I could barely get out of bed. How would I sit through a session?

And what if they spoke about their mothers? I was supposed to put everything personal aside inside the therapy room, but right now, I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I was crying all day, every sound and smell and thought set me off. How could I risk sitting for hours in session, seeing or hearing something that reminded me of Ma?

It wasn’t fair to my clients.

It wasn’t fair to me.

“You need to recover. You went through a huge shock,” Levi said.

My supervisor agreed. “You need to respect your limits, Aliza,” she said compassionately. “Your body is giving you a message, and that is that right now you need to look after yourself and take the time you need to heal. You need to remember your own family, not push yourself to the breaking point. That would be worse for everyone.”

I knew she was right, but it killed me to let my clients down in this way. A month off can be eternity for a client, and I was letting them down in a way I never dreamed I would.

But what choice did I have?

T

he kitchen was dark and grimy and for a moment, I thought, If Ma would come over, she’d take care of it all.

But Ma was gone. She wasn’t coming to lend a hand with the dishes or send me a piping hot pot of chicken soup, along with supper and some brownies for dessert.

I poured myself a drink of lukewarm apple juice — it had been sitting out on the counter, who had the energy to put things back in the fridge?  — and cried again.

An email pinged into my inbox and I just looked at my screen blankly. Emails were something from another lifetime. What even mattered right now?

I knew there was a world out there. It just didn’t really feel like I was part of it anymore.

The email was from Sari. Out of a sense of duty, I opened it.

Hope you are well — no, I’m not, but thanks for asking — was just wondering… if we could have a Zoom or phone session to work through a few things….

Zoom or phone session?

I could barely string a sentence together.

What was I supposed to say?

I left the email marked unread, for another day, until I could muster up the empathy and professionalism to write back to Sari. I explained that while I genuinely felt bad, I couldn’t offer any sessions right now, but would be in touch as soon as I could.

After I sent it, I wondered for a moment what Sari would think. What all my clients were thinking. I was a therapist, after all, wasn’t I supposed to handle everything with aplomb and calm and equanimity?

Well, I was a therapist, and I was also a human. I couldn’t keep everything together. And I was learning a humbling lesson that sometimes I needed to put my role as a therapist aside in order to heal and be able to give to others once again.

If I could tell Sari one thing, it would be: I feel terrible for the challenges this is causing you, but right now, I genuinely have nothing to give. I’m doing what I need to do in order to come back and be there for you, and all my clients, as soon as I can. 

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1021)