I've been reading again. It always happens. I cannot stop it, even if I try. This time, it's All New People by Anne Lamott.

At the very beginning of the story, Nanny, a twentysomething woman visits her hypnotist. This is therapy. The hypnotist urges her to go "backward in time, and ferret out the memories of pain; of despair, rejection, terror, shame. Freeze each memory, study it like a photograph, and then go backwards to the next one."

After she replays all these terribly upsetting, shaming memories, the hypnotist has her go back again and enter each memory, now as an adult charged with raising the child Nanny. And she does this. In each memory, she enters and gives her child-self a hand, a lap, a hug, a shoulder to cry on, company. She helps to heal the child Nanny.

I realized, reading, that that is all we ever want. Someone to give us a hand.

Now I am a mother. I am a wife/friend/teacher/stranger and I see today that I am charged with this. To lend a hand. When I am impatient with a child's behavior, a friend's behavior, whoever, I need to step back and reframe. These good people do not need a lecture or derision, they need a hand.

Joni Mitchell sings, all we ever wanted...was just to come in from the cold. I say yeah, Joni, I guess I'm the one who needs to open the door.