Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I've been talking to my therapist weekly and today she gave me a pep talk that helped focus me. What's happening is that all my old traumas have aroused themselves to fold into my grief over my daughter: my mother's cancer when I was fourteen, our move across country to a new high school where I knew no one, my elopement at nineteen, my first husband's abuse,my brother's alcoholism, my best friend's suicide, my brother's suicide, and now my daughter's death. I need to be getting out more with friends, making plans, not being so passive about Facetiming my grandkids, just making the effort not to slide into depression. I had a great talk with a friend two days ago, and last night with my daughter's childhood best friend, and today my best pal here and I walked then radically stopped in to get diet cokes and sit outside, with masks whenever we weren't sipping. It was the first diet coke either of us had had since the lockdown. It tasted mighty delicious. I told her yesterday when my husband and I were strolling our grandson, since it was trash day, I noticed everyone had a box of diet coke or diet pepsi to recycle. In hard times, a little vice helps. It sure perked up my morning!