A little over a year ago I started going to therapy. I go two hours every other week. When my husband first came clean about his morphine addiction in November 2021 I had a lot of anger and I knew I needed to process that. I had started asking around to some colleagues about therapist recommendations. Then, one of my best friends from high school died of an overdose six week after my husband came clean and the anger became debilitating. I had no idea either of them used anything other than marijuana until my husband came clean after nearly destroying us financially and my friend’s sister messaged me about her death. I felt like I was suffering for the mistakes they made, and they were not: my friend wasn’t suffering because she was dead and while my husband was suffering through recovery I was still suffering too, trying to put our life back together. Obviously, those feelings are not rational or fair and I knew I needed help getting past those feelings. So, as I was talking to my aunt about our family (she worked in recovery for years) she recommended a therapist whose office I immediately called. The therapist my aunt recommended didn’t have room for new patients, but they set me up with someone who had trained under her.

I adore my therapist. Early on in the EMDR sessions I was reminded of some friends I had kind of lost touch with and how they had helped me get through some tough things when I was younger. After that therapy session I reached out to those friends and they immediately planned a girls weekend for us in St. Louis, Missouri (pretty much the mid-point of the three places we all live now). Now, the three of us send each other Marco Polo videos almost daily. It’s been so great to have them back in my life and I know I have therapy, and more indirectly the suffering I endured at the end of 2021, to thank for that.

I tell people all the time I cry a lot in therapy, but I cry less in my car since I started therapy. For attorneys crying in our cars is sort of a running joke. I know other professions are stressful too, but for some reason attorneys seem to carry a lot. I guess its because so much of the time it feels like we are practicing therapy without a license. Whatever it is, I know a lot of us talk about the breakdowns in our cars before or after court. Since starting therapy, I rarely have breakdowns in my car.

The EMDR sessions went really well, and I feel like I made a lot of progress getting through things and understanding my bigger issues. Essentially, I think my issues can be boiled down to a constant feeling of not being good enough. The EMDR sessions really seem to have helped with that. About a month ago I was starting to wonder if I still needed to be in therapy. Then my father got cancer.

I’m very grateful I have an established relationship with a great therapist to help me through all of this. I have cried in my car quite a bit lately because of the impending loss of my father. Honestly, he was the subject of several of the events in my past that we are working through, but despite his imperfections and occasional blow-ups he was a great father. He worked really hard to provide for us and his hard work has set my mother and myself up in good positions to go on without him. He did a lot for my brother too, but my brother’s choices have him in a different position.

Parenting is one of those things that I think is really tough because I think the vast majority of parents are doing the best they know how. I’m sure my father was more patient than his father, but he still had enough blow-ups that I ended up with some trauma. I’m sure my mother did better than her parents too. I got pregnant as a teenager and my mother was so supportive. When her sister got pregnant young her mother handled it so badly my aunt did not keep the child. I think my mother was able to learn from the trauma of that situation and do better with her own child.

In my own life I’m trying to show my children more patience than I received from my father, but I’m sure I’m failing in many ways that will likely result in some sort of trauma for my children. I am a firm believer in gentle parenting, but I know in practice I fail at it regularly. I think therapy is helping with my parenting too. Identifying my own trauma can help me better navigate similar situations with my children.

I know my husband has childhood trauma too. He’s not been willing to go to therapy, but since he’s been in recovery he has started to identify some of the events that he knows negatively impacted him. We had our oldest in therapy for a bit to process some of his anger issues. We had my daughter in therapy for a bit, let her stop, and now she’s having major issues again. Her issues are a lot worse than just crying in the car. Her anxiety has got to the point she can’t even function. She can’t even get herself dressed for school a lot of days. We’ve received the nasty letters home from school about excessive absences because of all the days anxiety has caused her to miss school. She reminds me of that woman on Shameless who never leaves her house during the first season, except my daughter is not that clean. She hates being labeled as “anxious”, but we’ve spent hours in the hospital and there is nothing medically wrong with her.

I had a friend recommend a therapist for my mother to help her with the process of losing my father. I hope she follows through with it because I know losing your life partner will be tough. I’ve also been referred to several grief groups. I am torn as to whether its weird to start attending those before you’ve actually lost the loved one. I told my husband sometimes I feel crazy trying to check the boxes of the grieving process before my father has actually died. I just want to be able to support my mother, so I feel like I need to have processed everything ahead of time, so I can help her through it. I think in reality though, you can’t really prepare for the loss. At least not in terms of trying to anticipate how you will feel.

I listened to a book called The Hot Young Widows Club shortly after I lost my friend from high school. The author of that book lost her father and her husband within six weeks of each other (and maybe a child too? Or maybe the child was born right after the husband died? I can’t remember for sure, but definitely a lot of tragedy all at once). One big point of that book is that grief is not a competition. Someone will always have it worse than you, but that doesn’t mean what you’re going through isn’t tough. I’ve caught myself several times lately feeling guilty for being so sad about my father when talking to people who have lost children. Obviously, losing a child would be worse, but losing your parent isn’t easy either, even though it is the natural progression of things.

My father isn’t going to get to see my kids go through Confirmation, or graduation, or marriage, he’ll miss my youngest child’s First Communion, and may miss my third child’s First Communion. When I think about all the things he will miss it starts to feel kind of overwhelming. My own maternal grandmother missed out on most of those things with her grandchildren. She didn’t even get to meet her youngest two grandchildren. My paternal grandfather didn’t get to see any of his grandchildren get married. My father got to see a lot of the things: he was at all the baptisms for my children and he’s been at all their events along the way thus far. There’s just still obviously a lot he won’t get to see, or at least I won’t get to see him see those things. I’m not sure what I believe about your ability to see our world from heaven or whatever. All I know is it is sad to think about the things he won’t be with me for in the future.

I remember crying my sophomore year in high school at a sporting event. I was a cheerleader and we were playing New Covenant Academy. I started crying as we were warming up because I knew that was the only time my grandfather would get to see me cheerlead. Am I going to cry at my son’s First Communion in May, knowing it will be the last big religious event my father gets to experience with us? Here I go again, trying to feel all the things ahead of time… What can I say, I’m an overachiever.

I’m really glad I had an established relationship with a therapist prior to starting this journey with my father. I haven’t been sleeping great most nights, but hopefully continuing to work through things in therapy and continuing to get these ramblings out of my head will help.