Loving Your Child Is an Instinct; Shielding Him From the Consequences of What He Did to Another Human Being Is Something Else Entirely — I Learned the Difference at Sixty, at the Door of a Chicken Coop

I do not know.

And the not-knowing, which had felt like the worst part, turned out to be the door out.

Because I was never guilty of the certainty I’d been punishing myself for.

I was guilty of a real thing — looking away, choosing distance over a hard conversation — and that real thing is mine to carry and I do carry it.

But I had piled on top of it a false thing, a fantasy of total control, and been crushed under the weight of a crime I did not commit.

Learning to set down the false weight while still carrying the true one is, I think, the whole of what healing meant for me.