My husband is away on a golf trip and I am very good at alone-ing. I clean, bake, read, write, walk the dog, watch documentaries, work, and use complicated beauty products (moisture mask, micro planer, green self-tanner…). I listen to podcasts on speaker and eat supper at 8 pm.

The only thing I don’t do well in the Mr’s absence is go to bed. Correction: go to SLEEP. I actually go to bed earlier than usual but then procrastinate the actual “lights off” part. I’ve written many times about dreading sleeplessness. I know better, I do. I have strategies and thought processes and tea with valerian, and truth be told I don’t often need any of that. Sleep comes easily once I remember to give it a try.

Nevertheless, maybe I am a little short on sleep, okay? Just a few hours behind, but enough to weaken my defences. And also I am reading this great book on attachment theory (“How We Love” by Milan and Kay Yerkovich) – I’ve been picking it up and putting it down for months because it has just been to raw to consider various aspects of my childhood now as I help to care for a parent with Parkinson’s. The then and the now crash together like thunderheads and I have to stop and draw slow breaths and blink blink blink. But with all this alone time I’ve been trying to finish the book by reading chunks and then walking the dog while processing the information.

This afternoon I felt an emotional *clunk* halfway through my walk around the lake. Scattered memories sorted themselves into a pattern and I was simultaneously enlightened and despondent. The combination was overwhelming so I hurried home with a quivering chin (and an oblivious Schnoodle). Safely home, I was about to busy myself with some distraction – the laundry and a Bubble Hour outline for next week’s show – when it suddenly occurred to me there was no reason not to feel the feelings I was pushing away.

With the same sense of wonder as I feel when turning off the lights to sleep (“Oh right, this isn’t hard at all”) I sat on the stairs and held space for myself. (“Go ahead now and allow the response that occurs as a result of those memories.”) I wanted to see what might happen next and I bet you can guess: a cleansing cry of the private sort, the kind that doesn’t worry about how it looks or what anyone thinks but just releases and renews. It went on longer than expected and I marvelled at my own capacity to weep. It felt good to give up this burden I didn’t know I’d been carrying.

Several tissues later, I realized my little dog was watching me with concern. Whoosh! The reflective self returned. I never trouble my loved ones with my uncomfortable emotions and I can’t even tolerate worrying the damn dog. Deep breath…it was finished anyway…I felt better….

I will call my therapist tomorrow. It’s been months since my last appointment and I could use some help making sense of things. Just because it felt good to cry alone does not mean I need to process everything that way.

If I have learned anything in these years of recovery, it is the power of asking for help.