Of all the stories that were told to me,
the one that I've had the hardest time believing
was told to me by a friend of mine,
who's a professor in Northern California.
And I think one of the reasons I had a hard time believing
it is I am one of those people who loves therapy.
I love therapy.
I like to throw all my money at therapists.
Here, take it.
[LAUGHTER]
And I believe in them.
I believe that these people have been trained to be more human,
to listen, to see people.
"The new therapist specializes in trauma counseling."
You have only ever spoken on the phone.
Her house has a side gate that leads to a back entrance she
uses for patients.
You walk down a path, bordered on both sides with deer grass
and rosemary to the gate, which turns out to be locked.
Out the front door, the bell is a small, round disc
that you press firmly.
When the door finally opens, the woman standing there
yells at the top of her lungs, "Get away
from my house, what are you doing in my yard!"
It's as if a wounded Doberman Pinscher or a German Shepherd
has gained the power of speech.
And though you back up a few steps,
you manage to tell her you have an appointment.
"You have an appointment?", she spits back.
Then she pauses.
Everything pauses.
"Oh," she says, followed by "Oh, yes, that's right.
I'm sorry.
I'm so, so sorry."
When my friend told me that story,
I thought, that didn't happen.
And so I said to her, then what happened after that?
And she said-- she said, I went to the appointment.
And I did that thing, you know, I was like, what?
[LAUGHTER]
Except, in all honesty, I would have gone, too.
You don't travel all the way there.
You know, she had gotten a recommendation.
And then she gets all the way there.
And as-- you know, she has negotiated this stuff
all her life.
So she wasn't going to let it turn it around, that.
So she went to the appointment.
And I said, then what happened?
And then she said, well, after that, I went home and I wept.
And I called the machine and told her
that I will not be coming back.
And I said, you made another appointment.
She said, yeah, I made another appointment.
But I didn't go.
And that's how it works.
We are forced to negotiate these moments.
And you move through them.
And the impact, the emotional impact, the degrading,
the dismissal, the moments of being made invisible
happen again and again.
And they go in, they become part of the things
that you digest and have to figure out.
And luckily for her, she didn't go back.
And I was thinking--
when I wrote this, I was thinking about
that term is as a wounded Doberman Pinscher.
And that I just wrote.
But then I thought, if she's a Doberman Pinscher,
what is my friend?