Lucy’s therapy became a steady anchor. The therapist helped her name things: fear, anger, confusion. She helped Lucy understand that her body’s reactions— the jumpiness, the nightmares, the clinginess— were normal responses to something scary. That she wasn’t “being dramatic.” That she wasn’t “too sensitive.”
Hearing those words— words I had never been given— broke something open in me.
One day, about a month after the incident, Lucy drew a picture in therapy of a little girl in a car. The windows were shaded in dark scribbles. The girl’s mouth was a small line. Outside the car, Lucy drew a big stick figure with long hair holding a key.
“That’s you,” she said when the therapist asked.
“And what is Mom doing?” the therapist asked gently.
“Opening the door,” Lucy said.
The therapist looked at me with a soft expression. “That’s powerful,” she said.
Lucy nodded, serious. “My mom always comes back,” she said, as if announcing a law of the universe.
I held that sentence like a fragile, priceless thing.