Summary

Chapter 21 is titled “Journeying.” The author attends her first group counseling session as part of a program “designed to help participants bring their lives back to center and to enhance emotional health” (245). She spends several days contemplating and discussing her history and trauma in the company of many others doing the same thing. She recalls the day she arrived, and how strange it felt having to give up her cell phone, which she identifies as having been something of a lifeline when she was dealing with her chronic pain. “I feel like I’m giving away a limb to somebody I don’t even know” (246). As part of the work, she realizes she has identified herself almost entirely in terms of her pain for almost her entire life. Everything else – her marriage, her wanting to be a mother, her career...