The Woman Who Put Me Back Together

"So, do you want to make another appointment, or do you feel like you've grown so much that you don't need to come back?"

She said it so casually. Like it was a normal question. Like she hadn't just pulled the floor out from under me.

I felt panic move through my whole chest before I even had words for it. What do you mean? Yes I want to come back. Obviously I want to come back. Why would you even say that?

She smiled. I think she already knew the answer before she asked. I think that was kind of the point.

That was Christie.

Let me back up.

It was New Year's Eve 2018 and I was on my bathroom floor.

Not metaphorically. Actually on the floor. I had four kids, a teenager, a husband I wasn't getting along with, an autoimmune illness that hadn't been diagnosed yet but was already stealing my body out from under me, and hormones that were staging a full revolt. I was menopausal, exhausted, and angrier than I had ever been in my life. I was carrying everything and I was carrying it alone and I was running out of road.

I didn't get help that night. I should have. But I wasn't ready yet.

A couple of months later one of my kids had a complete meltdown. And something in me just broke open. I yelled. I lost it. I had my own meltdown right there in the middle of it. I called my oldest foster daughter downstairs to watch the kids because I knew I needed to leave, knew I could not be in that house one more minute, and I drove to my husband's office and sat down and cried and said the words I had been holding for longer than I could remember.

I can't do this anymore.

Here is the thing about Christie. My husband and I had actually met her before, when we needed a marriage counselor. We saw her a few times and she recommended we each do individual therapy and then come back to her together. We had so much going on. I didn't listen. I know now that if I had, I probably wouldn't have ended up on that bathroom floor. But that is the thing about advice you aren't ready to take yet.

When everything fell apart, she was the only therapist we knew. My husband called her. She agreed to see me.

We started at ground zero. Literally.

Shortly after we started seeing each other, I got really sick. The autoimmune issues that had been quietly dismantling me finally made themselves impossible to ignore. I was barely able to walk some days. Christie didn't try to do deep emotional work with someone who could hardly get off the couch. She was practical first. She told me to hire a sitter. Get someone to clean the house, even just every other week. Sign the younger kids up for a mom's day out program. Between her and my oldest daughter, they basically took over the running of my life for a while so I could just survive it.

I didn't know how much I needed someone to tell me it was okay to let things go until she told me.

As I got better, the real work started. Sometimes we met weekly. She listened, and I mean actually listened, not in the way where someone is waiting for their turn to talk, but in the way where you feel like what you are saying actually matters. She gave advice when I needed it. She reminded me, regularly, that I was smart. She made sure I laughed at something every single appointment without fail.

Every week I had to report in on self care. What had I done for myself. Christie was firm about this. She told me I needed friends, a real outlet, somewhere to go that was just mine. She said start small. Just invite someone for coffee.

So I did.

Our very next appointment I walked in with two coffees.

She looked at me. I looked at her. We sat in her office and talked and drank our coffee and I think that might have been the first time in years I had done something purely because it sounded nice. She had that effect. She had a way of making the small things feel like they counted.

Some weeks I cried through the whole hour. Some weeks we laughed so hard I forgot why I had come. Some weeks we fussed about the foster care system together like two people who had both seen enough of it to have opinions. Each appointment looked different. But every single one of them I showed up for myself. And every single week, so quietly I almost didn't notice it happening, she built me back up.

She talked about everything with me. Foster care, my kids, my marriage, my ex, my past, my future. She reminded me of my strengths when I couldn't see them. She held up a mirror when I was only willing to look at the floor. She never let me stay small for long.

Five years. I saw Christie for five years.

In 2024 I moved. And I had to say goodbye to the woman who had found me at my absolute lowest and slowly, carefully, stubbornly put all my pieces back together.

I think we both shed a tear. I know I did.

I still text her sometimes. When I hit a milestone, when something I built actually works, when I look at my life and feel genuinely proud of it, she is one of the first people I want to tell. Because she deserves to know. She was there for the version of me that didn't believe any of this was possible. She should get to see what happened next.

Here is why I am telling you this.

I am adamant, genuinely and loudly adamant, about foster and adoptive parents having a therapist. Not because it is a nice idea. Not because the pamphlets say so. Because you have no idea what is going to surface when you bring a child who comes from trauma into your home. Their history does not stay neatly in the past. It moves through your house. It gets into your nervous system. It finds every unhealed thing inside you and it presses on it.

You need someone in your corner who is not in the middle of it with you. Someone who can see you clearly when you cannot see yourself. Someone who will sit with you through the ugly weeks and the laughing weeks and the weeks where you just need to fuss about the system for an hour.

Someone like Christie.

The right therapist does not fix you. They do something better than that. They stay. Week after week, they show up, and they refuse to let you believe the worst version of yourself. They ask the hard questions. They make you bring coffee. They remind you of what you have actually built when you are too deep in the weeds to see it.

One day, maybe five years from now, they ask you if you even need to come back anymore.

And the panic in your chest will tell you everything you need to know about how far you have come and how much it all mattered.

Find your Christie. You deserve one.