Chapter 6 Guilt's Lesson 93

I CANNOT SAY in all honesty that the days that followed that fateful March evening were easy ones for me. Yes, on the one hand, I did feel lighter. I was noticing what it felt like not waiting for the next arrow to hit. Life seemed much less stressful. On the other hand, there was so much I wanted to share with Emily and could not. I wondered what she was feeling and thinking. I wondered if she was all right and even if she missed me at all as much as I missed her. After a few weeks, I was no longer waiting for the phone to ring. I stopped expecting to hear from her so soon, but in my heart of hearts I knew one day I would. I wondered when the you’ll have everything part of my angel’s words hold onto nothing would manifest in my life. Some days I thought that it was too heavy to hold open this door for so long, just waiting for Emily to come through. Then there were other days that I forgot I was holding a door at all and danced more freely.

On the door to my office it says that I practice Integrated Therapy. That word “integrated” has taken on new meaning for me. Originally, I meant to indicate that I practiced varied modalities of therapy and counseling. Now I am feeling I am learning to integrate my emotions and feelings, the easy ones and the hard ones as well as the dark and the light ones.

To help me move through these difficult days, I had taken to writing Emily letters expressing all the feelings