Today’s passage, “Good morning monster." In Catherine Gildiner’s groundbreaking novel about her therapy practice, she chronicles the experiences from  five of her most memorable and heroic patients. 

On of her patient’s named, “Laura” was a young woman struggling to make sense of the world around her, in understanding her anxiety and relationships with others.  Laura had been abandoned at age nine by her father, left to raise her younger siblings in an isolated cottage in the midst of winter. 

Laura’s mother had died a year prior.  Her mother became pregnant with Laura at age sixteen, which brought about shame and embarrassment to her traditional Italian family, so her parents forced her to get married, have the baby and promptly shunned, offering no emotional, financial, or physical support to the teenage girl, Laura’s mother.
 
Catherine writes, “I wondered if Laura’s mother had been clincally depressed and therefore emotionally unavailable for Laura. Who wouldn’t be depressed or traumatized having had an overprotective childhood, dominated by violent males and then marrying a man who didn’t want to marry her, who was himself inadequate, possibly emotionally and physically abusive, who resented and ignored her? Her parents had disowned her, never forgiving her for shaming them.”

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