Group: How One Therapist and a Circle of Strangers Saved My Life

by Christie Tate

Something about the way I was living made me want to stop living.

I know I felt a longing I couldn’t articulate and didn’t know how to satisfy.

I didn’t know then that a word existed to perfectly define my malady: lonely.

There was some reason that I felt so apart and alone, a reason why my heart was so slick. I didn’t know what it was, but I felt it pulsing as I fell asleep and wished to not wake up.

“It might be, but keeping secrets for other people is more toxic than other people knowing your business. Holding on to secrets is a way to hold shame that doesn’t belong to you.”