For a year I had been the subject of every conversation and a party to none of them — talked about, explained, diagnosed, corrected, my own account of my own days ranked beneath the account of the adult who was hurting me.

And in one plain question he moved me, without ceremony, from the thing being discussed to the person who might know the truth.

Children understand that shift instantly, in the body, before they have any words for it.

It is the difference between being a problem and being a person.

He asked me where the key was, and in the asking he handed me back a piece of myself I had not known was gone, and I would spend the rest of that year, and truthfully a good part of my life, learning how to hold it.

Dr.