Watching Lily earn her way back to that ordinary forgetfulness was the proudest and most painstaking thing I have ever been part of.

Some weights, once a child has carried them, can be set down.

It just takes someone strong enough to convince her, day after day, that she is finally allowed to.

I learned, in those months of patient un-teaching, that healing a child is not a single act but a thousand small repetitions, and that it works precisely opposite to the way the harm did.

The harm had been done through repetition too — a rule planted, a fear reinforced, a small self-erasure practiced until it became automatic.