Therapy Thursday

I’d love to say that is was solely the fact that I told Richard that I needed a more alliterative blog post subject that prompted him to acquiesce to Thursday sessions… But it happens that he has an opening now, and was going to be gone on Tuesday of the week after next anyway, so why not Thursdays? I’d say this is the last kind thing the universe is going to do for me before Mercury hits direct retro, so I’m takin’ it – from now on, it’s Therapy Thursday, kids :)

In other news, tonight’s session was one of those where it really just felt like catching up with a really supportive friend. I know that therapists are paid to do this. I get that Rich is not my friend. But I do love that it wouldn’t have surprised me a bit if he’d busted out a bottle of Chianti and insisted I take a glass.  We gabbed about ideal interior design, travel wishes, shoe splurges (yes, I bought the damned Fluevogs), to the point where I felt he was actually sharing something of himself when he joked about how finances come into play with his own pipe dreams. I love that I made a joke that I knew he’d play off of somehow, and he took the sarcastic and humorous route. That’s the kind of comfort level I want with my therapist.

Tonight’s session also gave birth to a new project: Adventures in Sister-Mom-hood. I was telling Rich a story about Joshua and cereal and a complete meltdown on my part (yeah, I’ll write about that later) and he said, “And I hope you’re writing about this stuff somewhere,” and something about how it’s a unique point of view that should be recorded and read.

I’ve sometimes thought that maybe I should start a separate place for Joshua-and-me posts, but for a different reason – because I fear that my sister-mom stuff distances me from my community. Makes me less fun, less desirable a companion, someone to take less seriously around discussions that have always been part of my fire, my passion.

But the way I see it, I have a new set of eyes. I have a way – not a replacement, but an additional – of looking at things that makes me all that much more engaged. Many of my friends have children now, and I very much want the world they grow up to live in to be a better one in as many ways as possible. But my kid… he’s already partway grownup. No one in my circle of friends recently popped out an early teenager; it’s kind of a lonely road that way. But through Joshua, we have this portal to a segment of the population that is between our generation and that of “our” children.

That’s a big deal, folks.

So I’m learning from him every bit as much as he’s learning from me. And tomorrow, I’ll track down the origins of Nyan Cat and tackle that prickly beast. Cuz it’s my job – not just as a sister-mom, but as a part of the same community I belonged to before I had a kid of my own. A community that fights for equality, whether the minority is based on gender, ethnicity, class, or any other group in which hierarchies exist.

Ummm…. Yeah, that’s all I’ve got for tonight. I sure hope a lot of you read this, cuz it’s a lot of shit that’s important to me. That is all. :)