The wall my daughter can’t get past
I’ve stopped trying to climb over it or knock it down. Now I just sit there.
When my daughter was a preteen, she would often use the metaphor of a wall to describe her life: “There’s a wall in front of me, Mommy. A thick, dark wall that keeps me trapped. It never goes away.”
Heartbroken, I would take up her metaphor and try to rework it: “Can we shatter the wall with dynamite? No? OK, can we climb over it? I’ll help you look for footholds! It’s too high? Well, what if we don’t face the wall anymore? What if we just turn around and walk away?”
Each time I engaged in this wordplay, she would look at me with a shattering combination of weariness, contempt, and pity: “You know I can’t, Mommy. It’s too hard.”
