Summary

In “Icarus Flew Before He Fell”, the author wonders what her children will tell their therapists, if they have therapists in the future. She wants to tell them “I’ve tried to love you the right way” but she knows that she has loved them in the ways that she is able to (247). Smith contemplates who her children would be without experiencing the divorce or the pandemic or the move. In the following fragments, Smith discusses her therapy sessions, post-divorce. In conversations with her talk therapist and her intuitive therapist, the clinicians emphasize her need for boundaries. The author struggles to reconcile that the persona who was once the most positive relationship in her life is now the most negative relationship in her life. While they are not a part of one another’s immediate spheres, she feels...