Photo credit: Chris Cypress/Pixabay
Card and Flowers
by Jane Seskin, LCSW
She sends me
a Mother’s Day card
every year
since I left my hospital office,
more than a decade ago.
***
I met her on the phone.
She told me her husband
was holding a gun to her head.
My office sent the police.
***
She became a client
in individual treatment
and joined a group I led
for battered women.
***
Over the years she left
her husband, went to school,
found employment, saw two
children graduate college,
and became a volunteer
advocate in our program
for crime victims.
***
And every year she sends
me a Mother’s Day card
with the same message:
“Dear Jane,
You gave me a life.
Thank you!”
***
And I write back:
“Dear Frannie,
It was waiting for you!
My Best, Jane.”
Jane Seskin, LCSW, (www.olderwisershorter.com) is a psychotherapist and writer. Her poetry collection about her work, Witness to Resilience: Stories of Intimate Violence (Second Edition: 2016), is available on Amazon.