Later that night, once the horses have been returned to their stalls, the dogs walked, the dinner eaten, and the dishes washed, I retreat to the spare bedroom. Sprawled across the bed, I open my journal and begin to revisit all the ways I’ve tried to do the opposite of Katherine—to avoid actually experiencing pain. Numbing out on everything from morphine to marathons of Grey’s Anatomy. Denying that it’s there at all. Refusing to let people in. I see now that these tactics have not rid me of my sorrow, just transmuted it, delayed it. What if I stopped thinking of pain as something that needs to
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