But I could do the only thing left, which was to answer the flinch, every single time, with the same steady message until her nervous system finally believed it: that she was safe now, that she was home, that in this house she would never again have to earn the right to be a person.

It was slow work.

It was the most important work I have ever done.

And I understood that I owed her every day of it, because the year of her suffering had been, in part, the price of my comfort.

Chapter 33 — Good Noise

Six months on, our home had transformed — not because of new furniture, but because it was full of noise.