And that was true, and it helped, a little.

But it was also true that my daughter had been trying to tell me, in every way a frightened child knows how, and that the reason she had stopped trying was that I had kept answering her fear with a lecture about fairness.

I could not undo that.

The only thing I could do with it was make an absolute, unbreakable promise to myself, in that chair, with the phone in my hand — that I would never again, as long as I lived, ask my daughter to be patient with someone who was hurting her.

Chapter 19 — You Will Never Be a Burden

Over the following months, Maya began seeing an adolescent trauma therapist her school had recommended — a warm, unhurried woman who was very good at her work — and slowly, in her own time, my daughter began to set down the things she had been carrying alone.