Dear Aiyana Henderson:

You are welcome and thank you.

“One thing I’ve had to learn is setting boundaries”- if you need help setting boundaries in a particular situation, let me know of the specifics of it and maybe I can suggest something helpful to you.

You like the movie The Notebook. I just read the plot and had tears at the end of the story, when Noah, an old man who suffered a heart attack reminds dementia- stricken Allie of their love story that started 64 years before, and he tells her “I’ll be seeing you”. In the morning they are discovered dead in their sleep, their hands clasped together. The Notebook is her journaling of their love story that started in 1940. She asked him to read it to her so that she can remember their love story. When you read a story like that, you don’t want their love story to end, and you are glad that they were holding hands in their last moments of life.

You wrote: “There’s a scene in the Notebook where Allie is asked by Noah ‘What do you want?’ I need to know my own authentic wants and needs”-

– it may help you to write, as in with a pen on paper, just like Allie did in her notebook, telling her love story. There is something about holding a pen and creating the lines on paper that stimulate thought and emotion. Or you can do it here, typing away anything that comes to your mind as you think of what you need and what you want, typing away without thinking about whether what you need and want is realistic, or whether you should need or want this or that.

I like how you described making your hair, like a professional writer, describing what someone else would sum up with a few dry words (such as: I did my hair), in a unique, intriguing way.

( I like your hair and face in the photo, makes me smile with affection for this young woman in the photo).

anita