There may not be an immediate solution to many of our sorrows, but it helps immeasurably to know their contours. We might, as we turn over our griefs, large and small, imagine that we are sharing them with an extremely kind, patient figure who gives us the chance to evoke hurt in detail, someone with whom there is no pressure to rush, be grown up or impressive, and who allows us to admit without fear to the many curious things that have pained and diminished us in the previous hours.
