For months she had been taught that she was helpless, that she could not manage anything without a man deciding it for her, that her own judgment could not be relied upon.

And here she was, in a genuine crisis, making a clear decision: to trust her daughter, to follow a plan, to do the frightening sensible thing rather than freeze.

It was a small act.

But recovery, I would come to see, is built out of exactly such small acts, each one a little contradiction of the lie she had been told about herself.

She could not have known it as she pulled that door closed.