OPINION — There is a photograph on a refrigerator in Sun City that stopped updating four years ago. The child in the photo is 9. She is 13 now. Her grandmother knows this because she counts.
As a licensed counselor in Phoenix, much of my work is with families after a rupture. Some of the people I sit with are adult children who stepped away from a parent, and stepping away saved them. I want to say that first and plainly, because it is often the whole story. There are families where distance is the only honest answer. The person who chose it does not owe anyone an explanation.
This isn’t for them or about them. It’s for the people in the other chair.
