Last fall, I made a plan to get through the dark, cold days of winter. During the previous two years, I’d traveled between Denver and Florida every other weekend to spend time with my sun-loving spouse, while maintaining a full roster of in-person and telehealth clients in Colorado.
It’s been thirteen years today since my dad died. The day sits in my memory; not just from sorrow and exhaustion, but also because it seemed fitting that he died on Pearl Harbor Day.
November has long been my least favorite month. It was my mom’s too (except for my brother’s birthday). She and I used to lament to each other on the phone each year when the time changed and the world went dark way earlier than seemed fair.
Now with two kids newly out of their twenties, three more in the midst of them, and a plethora of nephews, nieces, and kids’ friends in my life, I feel a deep compassion for twenty-somethings.
When people hear I’m a play therapist, they assume that all my clients have experienced a big trauma. Why else would a kid need therapy? And unfortunately, sometimes, that is the case.
I feel the first flutters of hope in nearly fourteen months, as the second vaccine courses through my blood, and daffodils and tulips stand up to the snow. Signs of life are in the air and I’ve found that inner energy that stole away and hid from me last spring.
My parents meant well, as most parents do; but they had grown up in an era of rigid racial, ethnic and gender stereotypes. Although they were never overtly unkind to people who didn’t fit into the narrow guardrails that lined the sheltered avenues they traveled, I was raised hearing the whispered qualifier, “well, she’s Jewish, you know,” and euphemisms such as “he’s a little light on his toes.”
Based in Denver, Colorado, Gretchen Seefried, LCSW, supports parents and adults in managing anxiety, stress, and trauma with empathy and care.
