Today, friends, without charging you a co-pay or forcing you to read your HIPA rights, I am going to share with you the single most important words my mechanic (AKA my therapist) ever said to me.

First though, some context. Around the time of this pivotal tune-up session (circa 2008), I had two tiny children, a mental illness, and a husband who was travelling for work, often to Tel Aviv and Mexico City, Rome and Detroit. During that particular tune-up session, he was in Bangkok, probably at a spy convention or Navy SEAL training. No one believes he’s actually in software sales.

With the time change between Seattle and Bangkok, exorbitant international phone charges, and I assume much tuk-tuk riding on his part, we weren’t able to speak to each other on the phone. It was odd, having no way to reach him, something I had not experienced for as long as we had known each other. I didn’t like it, not one bit. But I realized something surprising while he was away, and sitting on my mechanic’s couch that afternoon, I shared my news.

“You know what?” I said, “I’ve always been so terrified about what I would do if something happened to my husband. But for some reason, this trip made me realize if something did happen to him, it would be awful, terrible, horrible. I mean, it would be devastating.” I took a breath. “But I would survive.”

My mechanic, a Christian-cum-Buddhist-priest, smiled in that peaceful way and nodded his shaved head. “No . . . it would be awful, terrible, horrible. And you would survive.”

I thought about that for a moment, most likely eyeing him as I always eye wise, bald Christian-cum-Buddhists. Of course he was right. I would be devastated and I would survive. Both sides of that sentence could be simultaneously true. [Read more…]