I think I was a devastated one, and that my devastation created a vacuum, and that my nine-year-old, out of love, rushed to fill it, and that no one — not I, not any other adult — caught it in time.

What I have learned from it is not to hate myself, which helps no one, but to understand how easily this happens, and to watch for it now with the vigilance that only a person who has failed to watch can truly summon.

My daughter carried my weight because I could not, for a while, carry it myself.

The lesson is not that I was monstrous.

The lesson is that even a loving parent, sufficiently overwhelmed, can leave a gap that a child will fill — and that catching it, and correcting it, and taking the weight back the moment you are able, is one of the most important things a recovering parent can do.