The Space Created By Silence
How a therapy session with very little talking helped me heal
I kick off my shoes, tuck my legs up next to me, and sink into the soft folds of the overworn sofa, settling into the cozy room across from my therapist, Helen, as she putters around the office, finishing up paperwork from her previous client. Helen is not the first therapist I’ve seen since my son, Sam, was diagnosed with a terminal type of brain cancer called DIPG, but she is the first I have seen regularly. Helen came highly recommended, but past experiences with therapists gave me a healthy dose of skepticism and mistrust.
In early 2014, six months after Sam’s diagnosis, I thought some therapy might be a good idea, something the mother of a dying child should do. After a few hours of internet research, I found a clinic near our temporary home that took our insurance. Choosing a therapist from an online menu of practitioners is a strange and somewhat problematic process. Most of the counselors with availability were young, seemingly perky women. They didn’t appeal to me. Perhaps because their smiling photographs projected an identity I wanted to inhabit: young, professionally successful, happy, perhaps because I didn’t believe they could truly understand me, fully grasp what the past six months had asked me to endure, I ended up scheduling an initial consult with…
