A few weeks back, I went on a reading binge. It also meant I was watching a lot fewer DVDs. I took a week off to read YA novels—and I haven’t stopped reading since. Browsing available library ebooks, one title caught my eye.
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, by Lori Gottlieb, a psychotherapist.
Gottlieb, in a highly readable narrative, tells her personal story mixed with client interactions, and of her interactions with her own therapist. She clarifies the stages we go through when making personal changes. Okay, I thought, let’s try reading about therapy. The book gave me a kind of measure to look at myself and where I am in my own stage of adjustment to being on my own once more.
I saw psychotherapists many years ago, preceding a divorce from my first husband. That’s exactly what I was feeling the need for right now—that sense of being heard, being understood, and above all a sense of clarity about myself. But I hesitated. To begin therapy with a stranger would take so long just getting acquainted. Did I have that kind of time?
So here’s where serendipity comes in—though I disagree with the word. Would clairvoyance fit this situation?
On Saturday morning, as always, I went out to breakfast and then on to grocery shopping. In the Coop, I ran into my dear friend Jane. We stood chatting in the middle of the dairy aisle. I admitted to my need to talk to someone. We both agreed we’d hesitated to call the other, believing her life too busy to interrupt, but it turned out we are neither of us that busy.
So much better, faster, easier to talk to an old friend. And though she’s not a therapist, in her retirement she does do somewhat similar work.
We got together on Monday and I remarked on the good fortune of our running into each other. Jane, who doesn’t usually shop that early, said she’d felt this powerful urge to go to the Coop “right now.”
I tried to find a term for something that goes so much deeper than the implications behind serendipity. I just could not find the right word. Jane provided one. “It’s love,” she said.
Love is such a short word, an underrated and undervalued word to encompass such a far-reaching power.
But I agree. It’s love.
Kate Harrington 