Dear Lily:

You are very welcome and thank you for your good wishes for my foot and for me walking again (I walked to the mailbox yesterday and asked a neighbor to give me a ride back, it was so icy!)

“Somehow there was this conclusion by grown ups that I am difficult and problematic”- the message was not true. You were not difficult and problematic. They, the grown ups in your young life, they were the ones who were difficult and problematic.

“I don’t want to make this a lifelong excuse to rest on”- it is not an excuse. When a child gets a strong message from her parents that she is difficult and problematic, this is very powerful and as you well know, it severely harmed you.

I received the same message myself and I was very surprised when I figured out only recently, starting a few years ago, that it was not true, that I really was not difficult and problematic. It was such a surprise- I believed the message, it had stories attached to it, I heard it many times and I believed it.

“I am not scared of my own thoughts though. The thoughts of other people about me scare me”- when you think about what another person is thinking, it is you who is doing the thinking. For example, it is you that thought: maybe the neighbor overheard my phone conversation. What is she thinking?

The italicized is your thought, not the neighbor’s.

River sounds good, so does yoga. I used to hear those guided meditations sent to me by my therapist at the time, so many times and yet I forgot the name of the person’s voice, he was English, I remember that, the accent. I will look a bit later for the name and if I find it, I will let you know.

You are doing well, Lily. I am so pleased!

anita