Daily Devotion

I have a new everyday activity…

It goes like this:

There is a moment of quiet — though hardly ever silence…

A moment of slowness, but rarely exactly stillness…

When it happens again.

The thudding sensation in my stomach, sitting in my minivan in Jamaica Plain. The text to my husband back at her house, “have you seen my mom this morning?”

The knowing before I knew…

I’ve learned (and frankly being a trauma therapist doesn’t prevent you from needing to learn) to stop my mind there. Titrate out in small amounts. Reminders, not repercussions…

I simmer in the sensation. I feel the memories on the surface of the pool water as they shimmy and reflect the totality of my emotional sky, and try not to dive in…not every day, at least.

Because when I dive in, I go straight down and touch the drain.

The dive in days are brutal, and during the days past when I couldn’t stop them, the memories made me truly sick. No relief or release from the chronology of events, each coming with all the body sensations of the loss. Hours and hours on end. Brutal thoughts — “if only you’d taken her back to the doctor,” and all the vicious variations crushing relentlessly.

One day I’d like to write you the entirety, but I’ll wait until I know I can keep myself safe inside my own story.

Until then..

I’ll do my daily devotional.

(You have one, too..don’t you?)