Tomorrow is my therapy appointment. In only three session I have learned to check with my body and the way it reacts to different triggers. Today I learned that grief lives in my chest, right in the solar plexus. It makes me feel short of breath, as if my lungs are failing me. By the end of the day, it rises in a dull ache at the back of my head. It squeezes me from inside – I feel smaller. It makes it hard to talk, to swallow, everything tastes awful. All I wanted today was a hug. To feel someone’s warm body next to mine, holding me. There are so many people I could ask for a hug and so few of them are in physical proximity to me. There are so many people in physical proximity and none of them is emotionally close enough for such gesture. I couldn’t wait to pick my kids from school, so I can hold their little hands (my son’s hand is warm and still a little chubby, my daughter’s long-fingered, slender hand is perpetually cold) and hug them. Someone said today that it must be difficult to parent while grieving for one’s friends or country and I realised that parenting is the easiest thing to do right now, because it’s the only one that makes tangible sense.

Oh, and something else, I think I started hearing my own voice. Not the alter-ego voice accusing, belittling and picking me apart, but my own voice telling my story.