It was that her body, after weeks of full baskets, had at last begun to believe the famine was truly over.

Recovery, I learned, is not a decision.

It is the slow retraining of a frightened body by an environment that refuses, day after day, to confirm its fears.

All I could do was keep the basket full, and wait, and trust that a sufficient number of ordinary safe days would eventually add up to safety.

It took weeks.

It was, in its way, the most important work I have ever done: not saying anything, not fixing anything, just filling a basket, every single day, until my daughter’s body learned it could stop being afraid.

Meanwhile, the law did its work.