Gratitude Day 13 - Karen and Therapy

I struggle with depression.  There it is.  For everyone to see.  It has taken me four years to say those words.  In 2010, it got really bad.  Like, about as bad as these things can get.  And I was so fortunate that a few months before it got really bad, I made a stupid choice, which made Kelly think I needed therapy, which made me go to Karen.  Today I am a living, functioning member of society thanks to the support of a lot of people.  Especially Karen.

Karen is a lot of things: funny, brilliant, Dana Scully look-alike.  Because of these things, we connected immediately.  At times I thought she was my friend, my mother, my girlfriend, Dana Scully...  All of the transferences, I had them.  Every couple of weeks I would say to Karen, "I'm cured!" and pretend like I was done seeing her.  I think I made this comic 6-weeks in.  That's me...with the cape...cured...

She would ask me lots of good questions and make sure before I left that I knew that I was not, in fact, cured.  Then I'd come back the next Tuesday at 5:15.

Karen helped me learn that I am quite the catch.  And we had to dig through a big pile of packed down shit to find that version of me.

I can't quite remember who came up with it, probably Karen since she's so smart.  Anyway, we came up with the whole lily pad metaphor on which my life philosophy is based.

After three years of looking out her beautiful top floor Dupont Circle office window, I was a lot better.  And I was moving to Denver and I wasn't done with therapy yet.  So Karen did something difficult.  I mean, it was definitely difficult for me, and I like to *think* it wasn't super easy for her.  She cut me off.  Not before she helped me find Meredith, however.  And my work with Meredith out in Denver has been so different, and so valuable.

So today, I'm grateful to be alive, I'm grateful for Karen, and I'm grateful for therapy.  And I HOPE Karen is grateful for all those cookies.