The Alchemist
I have begun to write my memoir. Normally I would expect to hear the scuttling sounds of family running for cover, but I’m pretty sure they don’t read my blog. It has taken me a long time to get comfortable working with the material of my past. I once referred to this process in therapy as exhuming the bones from the shadowlands of my psyche . The first time I told one of my stories in therapy, I had given my therapist notice beforehand that I would be discussing something big. This was after a year of working together. At the beginning of that session, he unwrapped a fresh blue stick of putty and handed it to me. “Feel free to make something with this,” he said. And so for the next 45 minutes, I spoke and worked the putty with my hands. At the end of the session, he looked at me silently with watery eyes. “You are a storyteller,” he said. I asked him if he was okay, and passed him the blue putty. I had brutishly crafted a roundish blob. He held it up and looked at it curiously. “Wha