What Does a Therapist Do When She Has Turmoil of Her Own?

The fine art of patiently digesting the traumas and trials of others, when my brain has become a morbid minefield of abandonment and loss.

Illustrations by Lynn Scurfield

Today is my birthday. I am “celebrating” by seeing nine patients. Boom, boom, boom – assuaging other people’s hurt while burying my own. It’s been decades since birthdays felt like firecrackers and shooting stars. But today is the first birthday since Dad died seven months ago. A heart attack four years prior carried off Mom, so I’m a newly minted, fifty-something orphan. That’s not the tipping point making me quake at the prospect of sitting in my home office in Long Island City, Queens, a block from the East River, listening to nine patients from behind my hopefully wise-and-empathetic therapist mien. Recently, I’ve endured a new abandonment, this one from Janet, a friend who neglected to tell me over eleven years of serene communing that our bond had an expiration date. Last year, for my birthday she treated me to the biggest hit on Broadway; today, she hasn’t even sent a text. I expect romantic relationships to go sour, and I’ve got the litany of exe…