Dear Tom:

You are welcome.

Old wounds of the kind that happen in childhood take place in the brain. We shed our skin; we don’t shed our brain. The same brain cells, the same neurons that we had as children and the connections between them, are the same neurons and connections we have as adults.

And so, the past is really not in the past, it is in the present. The guy she is with may be as calm as can be, but if she is not calm, so … she is not calm. She doesn’t take on his brain. She is stuck with her own.

anita