leaving pottery barn... again

I created this blog post on January 6th, can you believe that?  Well you should... if you don't.  It has remained empty because I didn't want to fill it out and jinx anything with a potential career change, but the post has existed.  Anyway, lemme tell you why.

I was/am/have been unhappy for a long time.  The reasoning as to why is varied and complicated, because it touches on all sorts of things.  Love life, personal friendships, living situation, physical fitness, and of course, my job.  Some days certain topics carry more weight than others, and some days none of them seem to bother me.  But it's a constant fluctuation on the ferris wheel of my life and it has kept me spinning for a long time.  

Way back in December of 2021 I was told about an opportunity with my best friend Katie's company as a Technical Writer.  This meant working from home, not customer facing (thank god), and in a field I have always been passionate about. 

Not sure if you kids know this about me or not, but I'm a writer.  Author, if you're nasty.

I was hesitant but ultimately ready to jump at this.  We polished up my resume and I fired it off... and then waited.  And waited and waited and waited and waited.  False hopes were constantly thrown at me, "you'll get a call this week" and "you should have an e-mail today."  But nothing ever came.  I was holding out for what was supposed to be a sure-fire thing with my foot so firmly in the open door, and eventually it resulted with a phone call in April that was another clear indicator the job was mine.  But I would have to wait longer.  And longer.

And longer.

I gave it a time limit, saying that if I hadn't heard anything by mid-July, then I was going to move on.  The hard thing about having this dangled above my head for so long (to no fault of Katie's at all) was that it was a false hope I was attaching myself to.  And that's hard, when you've also attached yourself to a false romance.  And a false joy in your house that you never liked from day one... and a crushing disappointment in your health and fitness journey.  See where I'm going with this?

Andrew moved out at the start of July, and having that piece of the puzzle set in place (or removed?) gave me the small amount of clarity I needed.  It made me realize that at the core of a lot of this was that I was no longer happy, in any meaning of the word, at Pottery Barn.  I'd spent so many months thinking "it's not the company, it's that you want something different!  It's not your role, it's that you just need a change!"  But that wasn't it.  

It was the crushing responsibility of being the General Manager there.  Constantly on-call, constantly answering e-mails in your time off and messages from the staff.  Problem solving at any given moment.  Thinking of how to spin bad news to a customer base that is so volatile and cruel that the words they sling back at you stick and stay, long after your shift has ended.  I really don't have a lot of negative things to say about Williams-Sonoma Inc, by any means.  It is a pretty great company with excellent benefits and inclusivity.  Pay is "fine," but that is always subjective.  It's the customers.

This isn't because of Covid and the shipping issues created because of it, either.  This is well documented amongst my peers that have left over the years.  When you're "in" the situation, you make excuses.  You're so conditioned to just taking it from them that you understand it's just part of the job.  Part of the paycheck.  I've had grown ass adults screaming at the top of their lungs at me both on the phone and in person for several years because of their furniture not coming on time, or being delayed, or arriving damaged.  Screaming at me over "stuff."

It's just.  Fucking.  Stuff.

I've had people demand I fly to Vietnam to oversee the construction of a home office suite to ensure the quality.  I've had people expect free sectionals due to a botched delivery and that is what they feel they are owed.  I've had quite wealthy clients come in and throw a full-on temper tantrum over a floor model that they got cheaper at another store and demand I credit the difference for the one they purchased at my store.  This instance in particular involved a hand-slapping-on-the-counter-with-raised-voice-and-demeaningly-ruel-words-full-on temper tantrum.

Eventually you realize the effect this all has on your mental health.  Eventually you realize it's not normal to dread going to work because of a phone call you've got to make to a customer or an e-mail you need to reply to.  Eventually you realize it isn't normal to be on the verge of tears because of the fear you hold in handling a situation for one of your associates because it means you're going to be the one taking the gunfire.  Eventually you realize that you no longer spend your time at work as the General Manager actually managing... you're just putting out fires and throwing "the Sean Parker spin" on e-mails to get your team out of danger territory with a guest.

Ultimately... eventually... you realize how much Stockholm syndrome has taken hold of your life and that it's time to make a change.

I told my boss a week after Andrew moved out that I didn't want to be the General Manager at Pottery Barn anymore.  I couldn't handle the stress of the job, and I could no longer be what my team needed me to be.  I'd spent so long putting myself and my mental health on the back burner that the damage control I was doing for myself was almost insurmountable.  It wasn't okay anymore.  I had heard a rumor from several people that the District Visual Manager was wanting to step away from her role, and I suggested that I would like to take it.  He thought this was a great idea, as there was merit to the rumor, and he would reach out with next steps.  I felt better already.

Only a week later, however, he called to ask me point blank "why are you telling people you are pushing so-and-so out of their job and taking it for yourself?"  I was gobsmacked.  I had never once said that... never would say that... and was confused as to how the words I had actually shared had been twisted that way.  "So-and-so is really happy in their position and won't be stepping away, so what you need to do is control the narrative in your store and make sure your team understands how happy you are in your role."  I sat there with my face burning with so many emotions... embarrassment, betrayal, heartbreak, anger, confusion... when the big words came out from him:

"You need to make sure you're leaving behind a good legacy."

10 years of service wasn't enough to secure my "legacy."  Six full years as the General Manager, plus two holiday seasons as the Acting General Manger... that wasn't enough for my"legacy."  Getting my team through Covid and quarantine and George Floyd and the civil unrest, that wasn't enough for my "legacy."  Never-mind that I never made waves, or asked for help from other stores, or needed assistance in hiring.  That we were always staffed, that my team was happy, that I advocated and fought for more pay to each one of them that deserved and earned it.  Never-mind that my mental health was at the lowest point it has, arguably, ever been in my life.

I needed to leave behind a good legacy, and because I was crumbling as a human being, said legacy was in jeopardy.

That afternoon I accepted the invite from a recruiter with Gap, and in a little over two weeks, I had secured my new job as the General Manager for Banana Republic.  A former colleague had made the transition earlier in the year and for a moment I was concerned people would think she had something to do with it, but I knew that wasn't the truth and came to understand that it didn't matter if that's what people assumed.  I earned the job based on my own merits, my own skillset, and that is something I am very proud of.

Did you know I never actually interviewed to be the GM with Pottery Barn?  They just gave it to me when the spot opened up at the store I was in.  Talk about not feeling like you earned something, right?  Retail is a thankless job and it's definitely something everyone should have to do at least once in their life.  But to feel like it is a thankless job from within your own organization... that was the final straw for me.

Giving my notice was difficult because it was emotional.  I'm an emotional guy (no big surprise), so letting your friends (essentially your family) know that you are leaving is a really tough thing to do.  And what's funny is that when you DO give that notice... suddenly the "legacy" you are leaving behind is now crystal clear.

Emotions from everyone start to emerge.  There you have me, the writer and self-appointed "emotional vampire," sucking it all up.  

You start to understand for maybe the first time what you actually meant to people.  

We had a whole-store meeting the week after I gave my notice, the first whole-store meeting we'd been directed to host in 6 years.  I had already told everyone personally about my decision to leave and why, so they all knew about it going into the meeting (which was supposed to be about where we were on the year and then some trainings that needed to happen as we moved into the third quarter).  What the meeting turned into was a general love fest, if that's the right phrase?  I went around the circle and told each associate and manager what they meant to the store and to me, thanking them each for their service and what they brought to the table for the team.  I glossed over the more touching aspects for each person, because I kept feeling myself inching toward the point of tears and I didn't want the meeting to be about that.  Me, crying, waxing poetic.

But then they turned it to me.

They went around the circle in the same order and told me what I had done for them.  A few used the words "you saved me," and when I tell you that my throat sealed itself almost completely, that's an understatement.  Some I saved from a crummy former work situation, some I gave a chance because I saw talent in them.  There were the people I saved from isolation due to Covid, and others who had a specific schedule requirement that I was always fine accommodating.  My energy, my humor, my kindness, my empathy, my understanding... it was a lot to take in, being that for the most part, it was the first I had ever heard of these sentiments.

Admittedly there is a part of me that wishes I knew some of these things before I decided to leave.   Not that it would have changed my decision, but just... I don't know.  I guess it's nice to hear that you're doing a good job now and then.  It's lonely at the top, as they say, and you spend a lot of your time celebrating the achievements of your team (as you should) when not much usually comes back to you for leading them there.  There were the "I love working with you!" comments over the years, but (and maybe I'm alone here) those sometimes can feel like throwaway statements, y'know?  Akin to "I love when you make this for dinner!" or something.  You listen and you appreciate but ultimately you disregard.

I'm also this way when people compliment how I look, it's just a thing I do.  Anyway.

My open letter to the staff

A week later, my last day with Pottery Barn carried such odd feelings.  My boss and several General Managers and managers in training were in my store for the day, coincidentally, and I got to have a great final lunch with them and meet the person who was maybe taking over my store.  I felt complete in my decision making, realizing it was time for the passing of the guard or whatever you want to call it.  My time had come.  It was the first time I've ever left a job and didn't write personalized letters to the staff, or at least some of the staff.  I used to do that for some reason that was lost on me... maybe I just thought it was appropriate back then?  I instead this time wrote an open letter to the staff, so that they knew where my heart was and that largely, it stayed with them.  

When the day was over, I got in my car and sat there, tears welling in my eyes and my hands shakily holding the steering wheel as I stared at the store.  I was thinking about the two weeks preceding... then the 10 years preceding... and what the future holds.  It was surreal.  I felt like I was standing at the precipice of something new and exciting again.  I felt this same way 10 years ago when I first started at Pottery Barn.

Because 10 years ago, #10 on my list of 26 Golden Things (an old door closes) seemed like the most impossible one to achieve.  Leaving Express after 8 years was this weird, foreign concept to me because it was leaving familiarity.  Today I re-read that blog and it sorta struck me how similar I feel now as I did then.  The uncertainty before me, the fear of stepping out of a comfort zone and learning how to do things all over again.  Not being the most knowledgable in the building, not having all the answers at the drop of a hat or the work around in any given situation.  But staying meant staying complacent in a life I have been far too... complacent... with.  That's not what I need right now.

What I need is change.  It's what I crave.  New starts and fresh beginnings and glimpses of hope that will direct me on my path.  Like I wrote back in 2012, the time has come for it to be over and for me to move along.  I've been in a stasis with Pottery Barn (re: life) for too long, waiting for things to happen to me instead of making them happen for myself.  Taking the reigns again feels good and it's something I'm trying to re-learn in many different ways right now.

Pottery Barn #733, The Shoppes at Arbor Lakes

I rest easy now in knowing what legacy I leave behind at Pottery Barn.  I know that I always led people first and foremost with kindness.  I know that I was always fair, that I strived to do what was right, and that I chose to see the good in everyone.  It may not have always been the best strategy, as some people (as we all know) are just plain and simple rotten, but it was what worked for me.  And in the end, I feel it worked for them too.  I was anticipating a call from one of the Regional Vice Presidents... or the Senior Vice President that had hired me.  People I had developed relationships with over my 10 years and ones I thought might be curious to why I was leaving and would want to maybe wish me well.  I also expected a call from HR to give me an exit interview.

None of that happened.  

Because none of that happened, I rested even more easily in my decision to leave.  Perhaps I held myself on a higher pedestal than my role was truly worth... perhaps, like the entitled customers I had come to loathe from my exceptional service over the years, I, too, had become blind to what I was owed.  But then when I think on it, I never had a bad corporate visit, did I?  Nope.  Not from the CEO, not from the brand president, and not from the multiple visits with the Regionals and District Managers.  In my six years in charge at this store, the visual standards were always exemplary, operating procedures were followed to a T.  I was always fully hired, we were always happy, and we were always professional.  Maybe I wasn't owed a phone call... but I know what true respect looks like, and I know how I was respected by my team and my peers... and I know I had earned a phone call.  

Holding onto that kind of anger is pointless, however, and when it all boils down... it's too harmful to not just let go of it.  So I've written it out here and I gladly leave it behind with all the other things unsaid and undone with this company.

Deepak Chopra wrote the quote at the top of the blog, but it does leave out the second sentence and the one I like the most: "All great changes are preceded by chaos.  The disruption we see in the world is the prelude to emergence."  I think my life this year has been such a big damn mess (read my blogs), but it can only mean good, right?  Just like saying when you've hit rock bottom, there's nowhere to go but up.

Tonight I went to my former stock associate's house for the farewell party the staff threw for me.  I visited with them, we chatted, and we all had a good time before I came home.  It's surreal to not be "the boss" anymore, but the most exciting thing is now I can transition into "friend" with them and be able to fully be myself with them.  Tomorrow I start my new career at Banana Republic.  It's wild that this has all finally come to a close, but here we are!  When all is said and done, it's another big change for me.  It's not the last one, probably the last "big" one for this year, but certainly not the last one.  Guess you'll just have to see what comes next.

Ciao for now (c:

when it comes to therapy

I remember when I was a tween... maybe 12... and going to see what I now understand to have been a childhood psychiatrist.  At the time I thought I was so cool and important, the way I felt cool when I got braces for the first time or when I got my glasses that I wore all around even though I didn't need to.  My mom took me in because I'd been having stomach issues (bad gallbladder) and the doctors were thinking maybe it was in my head.  So we got there and I thought there was going to be some miracle thing around fixing me, but there wasn't.  The guy chatted with me, I tried not to exaggerate my life up-to-then, and then we left.  

I said I didn't want to go back because ultimately, it was a disappointing experience.  No cure?  Get lost.

Launching forward another 12 years, I started seeing a couples counselor with Ken.  We had gone through a couple cheating scandals/affairs, and I said that if I was going to stay, then he needed to get us counseling to try and work through whatever it was that we were going through.  I can remember sitting down with this lady, someone that was paid for through Ken's work, and her asking "so why are you both here?"  And he looked at me with eyes that said "your story, you tell her," and that was therapy.

It was me talking, waxing poetic, artfully crying, attempting to get her on MY side, and trying for a limited four sessions to fix whatever "love" meant to me at that point.  In hindsight it was sham.  I wasn't taking it seriously because in my heart of hearts, I knew we were toast.  And I think in his heart of hearts, he was doing it because it was just what you should do to not rock the boat anymore than you already have.  And then of course in her heart of hearts I think she was just getting a paycheck.  Can't fault her, really.

And that was what I maintained was therapy for a long time after, just kind of a ruse where you could go and chat and say you were better and then scoot along and be allegedly better for it.  Maybe other people got more from it than I did, and maybe not.  My own experiences had been poop.

In 2017, after another relationship ended in cheating, I was left once again looking at the broken pieces of a life I had held publicly in high regard, but in reality had grown to resent for the mirage that it was.  I say this because it was a life of Instagram posts and witty blogs to show everyone how happy I was and how great my world was, and aren't you jealous?  Don't you wish you could be here WITH me to experience it all?  But it was a trick of the light... a figment of a reality that didn't exist.  When I realized this, I also realized I needed help.  Depression is a funny thing in how it hides so cleverly below the surface, waiting for a chance to dig its claws in and drag you under.  I was going under.

I had mentioned in the summer at a doctor visit that I wasn't doing well with my own happiness, and it was suggested that I reach out to a therapist for help within the hospital network.  I said yeah, that would be great, but I left it there and never intended to act on it.  Luckily some doctors take that sort of thing seriously, because had they not submitted me to whatever system they operate in, I never would have received a call a few weeks later from the scheduling team.  They had a therapist ready for me, and I just needed to agree to an appointment.

And so I met Kelsey.  

She was newer to the field, having recently graduated from school, and everything we talked about needed to be gone over with her supervisor (or at least, that was how I understood it).  I remember sitting in her small office that had a little... loveseat?... against the wall, a couple lamps, a couple pieces of artwork, and her desk.  Oh, and two desk chairs.  I always chose one of the desk chairs, my back to the door, and I stared a lot at one of the images on the wall.  It was of a dam, if I remember correctly, and the shadows of the cables running in the air above were cast on the dam wall.

When she asked me what brought me in, I realized in that moment it was my chance to drop the bullshit.  In that instant, my chance had presented itself to shed the past like the dead weight it had actually become.  I had no partner in the room to point the finger at, I had no parent with me to stop me from sharing possibly too much, it was just us.  And I was 31, so really, the jig was up.  I started talking.  And I talked and I talked and I cried.  I was heartbroken over my relationship ending, first and foremost.  I was devastated and embarrassed, and in some ways to this day, I still am.  I've had three great loves in my life and Derek was one of them, the one that was perhaps the most consistent with no breaks during and no scandals until the very end.

Why I would still feel some sort of devastation and embarrassment, I don't think I could tell you.  It's not a big part of me, yet it lingers in the dark sometimes.  You put too much focus on it, you give it too much weight, and it can come out of the shadows for a visit.  However brief.

In the beginning I was seeing Kelsey weekly, and after the first month, it moved to bi-weekly.  We graduated from talking about Derek and Ken to talking about other things.  Family dynamics, my relationships with my parents as a whole, my mom and dad separately, and the same with my siblings.  We worked on the issues I had there, issues I never knew I had, because I'd not brought them up before to focus on and I'd also never been asked the... right questions?  Or maybe the right follow-up questions?  I don't know.  We moved into work issues, friend issues.  I addressed the at times crippling anxiety that I deal with.  The phobias I handle seemingly with ease.  How I can be controlling, neurotic, and perhaps too head-strong.

By the spring of 2018, Kelsey felt like my friend.  I don't know if that's the point of therapy, I assume it's not to pay for a friendship, but there we were.  I trusted her.  She occasionally gave an opinion but never one of "this is what you should do."  It was more of "I hear what you're saying, and I understand why you say it.  What do you feel when you're in this situation?" It was a constant flow of addressing my feelings and seeking to understand them.  At this point I was only seeing her once a month.

So I bought the Manor, my first house, and we had a session that June where I told her I felt like I didn't need to be in therapy anymore.  Weirdly it felt like breaking up, y'know?  We weren't going to talk anymore, not outside of that office, because that crosses some sort of boundary that I didn't go to school to understand.  I just knew it was a non-negotiable and best not to ask.  She was having a baby that fall, her first, so I knew the time limit had sort of been established anyway on when we would be sunsetting our chats.  My last appointment would be in July, and when it came, she had to reschedule it due to maybe a doctors appointment or something popping up on her end.  I took it as a sign not to reschedule, that it was the universe telling me I was good to go.

I worked on my house for a year, and I focused on bettering myself for ME, not for someone or anyone else, and it worked.  After being single a year and a half, I dated again that winter, my lovely Jonathan, aka Mursula Gandalf O'Brien.  Ultimately it did not work out with him, but it was the first time I in my adult life had been able to sit down with someone and explain why it wasn't working out.  Odd how three years later and he is undoubtedly one of the best friends I've ever had.  Anywho, hey girl.

I met Andrew in 2019, a year to the day after buying the house.  Nine months later I lost Andrew when he left me, citing reasons that dealt largely with his mental health.  I was so flabbergasted, to put it lightly, over what happened with us, and I was so fucking MAD at myself for having let go of all the work I had done to become the guy he had originally been attracted to.  It felt like punishment for thinking I could have bettered myself, and this was the universe's way of smacking me with reality.  I was a mess, doubled over with my own issues as Covid spread and turned everything familiar upside down.  Social interactions that could have helped me move forward were ripped away.  Being out in public and writing, like I am right now, was not an option.  

There was a lot of shame that came upon me when Andrew and I first broke up.  Pure shame that I had lost myself so willingly and so blindly to a love I had felt like no other before it.  And that sucked.  When we had a brief quarrel that spring, I used therapy as if it were a weapon, telling him I'd been forced to go back to it because of him, as if that were a bad thing.  It was also a lie, because of course I had not gone back.  I thought about it, sure, but I never pursued it.  In hindsight I'm not sure why I thought saying I had gone back to therapy was a bad thing... maybe my mindset was on "you hurt me bad enough that I can't cope by myself"?  I don't know.  

When we inevitably got back together a year later, there was the small voice in the back of my mind telling me not to do it.  I felt like I was setting myself up for more pain, and yes, eventually I was, but at the time the pros outweighed the cons.  

Ultimately by the time winter came around this past year, I was not doing well.  There were a lot of reasons why, most of them had to do with my relationship and what was going on within it.  I could not easily find Kelsey, either.  I knew her first and last name, but not if she was even working there any longer.  I probably could've called but that would mean stepping out of my comfort zone and we certainly couldn't have that.  So I hunted her down through the hospital directory, eventually found her, and eventually was able to make an appointment.  

Therapy started back up in January this year.

It's funny, but I can't really even describe what that first meeting was like with her.  It had been nearly four years since we last spoke and there was a lot to catch her up on, but ultimately it was this incredible, all encompassing relief that I had found her and could talk to her.  She'd been with me before... she still had the notes from before.  It was almost as if no time at all had passed.

Eventually I started seeing an additional therapist to work through another kind of trauma that I was grappling with, which was expensive and on the side and something that I learned from but don't need to participate in again.  That was for two months and not something I'll get into here.

When Kelsey and I reconnected, she had by then welcomed two children into her life and a third was on the way this August.  That gave me a time limit, as it were (and as I assigned), to work through my shit.  I didn't want to come back with a no-end-in-sight mentality around therapy, because that's not how I operate in general.  What's the problem, why is it a problem, and how can I fix it?  The sessions were all going to be remote and through zoom, something I was nervous about at first but ultimately came to enjoy.  It was quicker, easier, and there was no lost connection between us despite not being in the same room.

Sometimes it was hard having these sessions when Andrew was home.  He would lock himself away in his office with his noise cancelling headphones on, but I felt like I needed to be guarded and careful about what I said in the off chance he would hear me.  After all, the bulk of our conversation was around him, me, and what was going on.  I'm pretty open in this forum about my life, the blog forum, and with Andrew I was pretty open as well, but what Kelsey and I talked about was between us.  They were my darkest, most desperate thoughts, and sharing those with anyone else just didn't compute.  He would ask me after my sessions if I wanted to talk about anything we had discussed, and I rarely if ever did.  Sometimes it annoyed me that he would ask, made me angry, because I was trying to get it in my mind that I was doing this to better myself.  I was not trying to better him, because largely at that point I had given up trying to do so.  Our agreement had been that he would go to therapy as well on his own, and after two sessions he stopped.  There was a lot of fury in me towards him for that, because to me, it just looked like he had given up on himself, and thus our life together.  I had to be in it for myself and no one else.

I never voiced that to him, not until now of course if he's reading this, and it is what it is.

When we broke up, I had resigned myself to reality and accepted it for face value.  I could no longer try to look deeper in him, I could no longer make excuses, I just had to give up.  And for me, giving up is a very hard thing to do.  Maybe because I'm stubborn and a control freak, though the latter is something I'm not supposed to say about myself.  Kelsey once phrased it as "oh we don't say that, we like to say persistently with our choices."  It was a laugh.

In July, after Andrew had moved out, we determined I needed to figure out how to be a generator of my own happiness again.  What does it take to be a generator?  We ended a call one day and I went and grabbed a huge sketchbook, writing in great big bold letters across the top "HOW TO BECOME A GENERATOR."  I filled out three columns beneath that, What's the problem? Why tho? and What's the solution?  I then took my time filling the columns out, coming up with 15 things in my life that bother me, what exactly the reason is behind them bothering me, and then what the ways are in which I could hopefully resolve them.  The effect was pretty immediate, seeing all of the swirling thoughts that had bombarded my mind for months, neatly put onto paper.  Organized thoughtfully, carefully, and in a way that I could take action on them.  Some I already have.

Yesterday was my last day of therapy with Kelsey as she prepares for maternity leave next week.  I had felt that after Andrew moved out, I put the pedal to the metal to get myself together.  That meant compartmentalizing some things in a way, and it also meant setting plans into motion in another (such as quitting my job at Pottery Barn (more on that soon)).  It's funny though how in the rush to get these things all going, I felt like I was doing it to make my teacher happy.  Not because I could then scream out "I'm CURED!" but because having a time limit meant I needed to just figure my business out... to show I had figured my shit out to the one person that knew what that shit was.

I don't know if it's the last session I'll ever have with her, or even if it's the last time I'll ever talk to her.  When I closed my laptop after exiting the zoom, I put my head down on the dining table and I cried.  Perhaps it is the overwhelming happiness I feel at accomplishing something again, when it feels like it has been years since I last did.  Perhaps it's the sadness that this individual, large in part a tool of recovery to me themselves, has to go away for a while.  And then perhaps, also, it is because for the first time in a very long time I feel hope for what is to come.  I feel like I've got a chance now to change my circumstances, in whatever way I want, and that's a really great thing.  

Just like therapy turned out to be, as it were.

I used to be so skeptical of a stranger coming into your life and turning it in so many different directions through the power of conversation, but that is what happened here.  Kelsey saved me in ways I didn't know I needed to be saved... in ways I didn't know I could be saved.  And I'll be forever grateful to her for being a person I could turn to in my lowest hours, for just a little reassurance and the slightest hint of guidance.  The rest was up to me, as it always has been, and she let me see that for myself.

I'm filled with gratitude toward her, more than I know how to say.  And if you've ever had the opportunity to participate in something such as this, perhaps you agree.  It's not always comfortable, it's not always easy, and it's certainly not always fun.  But in the end, it's important work and it's so alleviating (hopefully) as to what is troubling you.  I'm living proof of that.

Ciao for now (c: