Mi Querida Amiga:

I’ve been thinking of you a lot recently. Things have been tough for me and the family this year, with all manner of badness creeping out of the darkness to tap us on the shoulder and remind us of our own vulnerability. I found myself overwhelmed, for the first time in a long time, maybe ever – I can’t recall ever having a breakdown of that magnitude before. You know me: master of the art of portraying everything being together, while behind the curtain, running like a hamster on a wheel.

It shook me, my friend.

I felt like I was bouncing off the bottom of things, really out of control. It took the grace of my children to save me. I’m thankful for them, for how kind they are. That kindness was a lifeline, and I’ll never forget it.

I had to face some hard truths in the aftermath of all that. I had to practice the radical honesty I espoused, but hadn’t lived quite fully, and in doing so, I came face to face with some realities I didn’t anticipate. I was aware of behavior patterns that’ve recurred in my life, and I thought I had a handle on the ‘why’ of them – but it turns out I didn’t.

I wasn’t asking the deeper questions about them: what prompted them, where they came from, why they existed in the first place. And in doing that excavation, combining meditation and intense journaling over a month now, I found the narrative I had for myself, about myself, was riddled with shadows and blind corners and incompletion. It all led back to trauma I’d buried down deep, that bubbled up and created patterns that were immature and predicated solely on ensuring my survival.

And you kept popping into my mind.

We came together late in life, you and I. I was astonished at your tenacity, your overwhelming desire to move through your past life and create a new one for yourself. I saw you reading and studying and growing, so much and so rapidly, and I was honored to be a support to you and for you. At the same time, I realize now that I was also intimidated by you, your strength. You made it look so easy, you made such tremendous strides, accumulated so much wisdom from your experience – I was proud of you on the one hand, and worried I couldn’t match up with you on the other. I didn’t realize it then, but the clarity of time and catastrophe has laid those truths bare to me.

So I want to tell you two things.

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when you needed me, and expected me to be. I’m sorry I fell into the trap of self-sabotage when I felt uncomfortable being close to you. I’m sorry I hurt you and you had to express yourself so painfully. I’m sorry I didn’t know myself well enough to recognize the past realities that were influencing my actions without my even being aware of it.

I’m also grateful to you for responding the way you did, because you were right.

When you yelled at me “You don’t know how to be in a relationship!” you were absolutely, one hundred percent correct. You were right.

The truth you were showing me was so glaringly obvious that I did the only thing I knew how to do, an action created by the terror of a child living in a chaotic household: I shut down, and I stepped away.

But you were right, and I see that now. I wish you could know that, for whatever it’s worth.

You’ll never see this; the life you live now doesn’t lend itself to forums like this one. But I had to write it, for myself as much as for you, and maybe for the souls who’ll read it here and feel some connection, some resonance with the words. One of my prime directives now is to move this trauma out of my body by creating art. This is an exercise in exorcising those old patterns. I’m directed to shine awareness on my history, understand it. Only then can I release it and move past the patterns created by the damage I endured. I’m nowhere near healed, but I feel lighter now.

I hope you are well, dear friend. I hope your life is more joyful than it was when we came together last. I hope your husband learned as much as you did, and I hope he treats you and your children better this time round than the way you described he did before.

Mostly I wish you safety, I wish you happiness, and I wish you peace, now and always.

You were a blessing to me. And when the moon is big and round and full, I shall think of you, and I shall smile.