It is a lie that keeps you chained to the person who hurt you long after they have stopped being able to hurt you, because if your peace depends on their downfall, then you have handed them your peace, and you will not get it back until they fall, and maybe not even then.

I watched Solomon’s life come apart, and I felt no wholeness in it, because my wholeness was never located in him.

It could not be.

It was located in me, and in my son, and in the ordinary sunlit life we were rebuilding without him — a life that did not require his suffering as an ingredient, that would have been exactly as good if he had somehow flourished.

That is the thing I discovered, and it surprised me: the truest sign that I had healed was not that his downfall satisfied me.