What I want remember from today is sitting on the floor in my therapist’s room (the word cabinet sounds much too formal, masculine and colonial and not at all fitting her), inhaling a faint smell of burning sage and telling my life story, year by year, milestone by milestone, piece by tiny piece. The parts I experienced, the parts I remembered and the parts I did not know as facts, but as some intergenerational knowledge. It felt powerful, just to hold those pieces together, to lay them out in the open, b ‘cause once I was able to hold them, I knew they were mine. I could look at them without pain, without shame or regret, but with recognition and acceptance. They are mine. And once I held them, once I claimed them, I knew I could do something with them. I can’t do anything about them, but I can do something with them. And this, I believe, is healing.