We are not sure that it matters, but we thought some readers might be wondering about the outside life. The outside Pam is 41-years old, married, and has two children, ages 4 and 7. I have some reflections on my experience having children at: birth. I teach full-time at a university, and have, so far, been able to follow my healing journey without interrupting my work (though I am certainly not at my former level of productivity).

I do have some reflections on healing while functioning. It is necessary to take the healing fairly slow, certainly to let it unfold rather than trying to push it along. I believe in that anyway. There is too much danger of just being retraumatized if I try to hurry the process or get memories before they are ready to come. I used to worry sometimes that the memories did not come because there is not enough space for them in the life, but I tried to be patient with the process before I decided that the only alternative was to put my life on hold and plunge into the darkness. And sure enough the memories did eventually start to come, and they were so awful that I was glad that they hadn't come any sooner.

On the other hand, I have found it really feels like support to have so much outside structure. No matter how depressed I feel, I have to teach my classes, and I find that my problems go out of my mind for those 50 minutes. My life is really not connected inside in a linear fashion right now; it is only the outside structure (classes to teach, children to pick up) that keeps me behaving in a fashion that looks normal.

I wrote to someone who was struggling with the decision to go back into therapy:

I went back into therapy (after doing some good work ten years ago) two years ago when my daughter was 2 and my son was 5. The immediate cause was that I was so angry at my husband (we started out doing couples counseling and then my issues started to come up), but a lot of what was happening was that my children were triggering new issues for me.

I do often feel wiped out or lost after therapy (and I go on Thursday so I have the weekend coming up pretty soon to recover). But I have been able to really open up the past, and the issues of the insiders, while continuing to do a good job at work. I don't do as much as I used to at home, but my husband understands and is willing to pick up the slack.

I think the most important thing about healing while continuing to cope is to go at your own pace. My therapist never pushes me to face anything--he waits for it to come out by itself. And it amazes me how the worst things can come out and I feel better afterwards, knowing even something very painful takes a lot less energy than repressing it.

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