The one about therapy and sweet, round foods

And The Glass House by Anna Buist and Graeme Simsion

Thinking and reading. All in one

This week I have been thinking about therapy, which is par for the course, I’m always thinking about therapy probably because I spend quite a bit of time there.

For the last seven years I have been seeing C twice a week. When we don’t meet (because one of us is away or one of us is sick0 - we exchange text messages, just a one liner, he to remind me that he is alive and I have not been forgotten and me to say thank you for always remembering me.  I’m not going to go into a full analysis of my mental health  because I’d regret it faster than I could delete this post and because I have seen C for seven years - twice a week and I still haven’t been able to tell him the things that I thought I went into therapy for.

But now I am thinking about it differently because my therapy with him is coming to an end. It’s not that I’ve made some remarkable breakthrough, although he has helped me more than I can describe, but because it’s time. Not my time, mind you - but his. The man has the audacity to be human and to age and to look forward to a retirement without me sitting and wailing in his office twice a week while I try to force the words that strangle me out of mouth.

I have known it’s been coming for a while, in fact he might say that I started preparing for it when we first met but that’s just because he knows me in ways I don’t acknowledge myself. But it seems almost a little magical that I chose to read a book about psychotherapy/psychiatry on my way to the end of the journey with my therapist. I din’t plan it, in fact I didn’t even know what the book was about when I picked it up. But when I tell him that I read it I know he will be interested, curious to find out what I think that means (in that way that therapists do) and why I picked it up in the first place.

The Glass House by Anna Buist and Graeme Simsion is a fictional novel about an acute mental health ward. But rather than just telling the story of its patients it also tells the stories of its staff members. It lifts the veil on the humanity of doctors, psychiatrists and psychotherapists in a way that is thought provoking, endearing and affirming.

Together Buist and Simsion have created a cast of characters that are truly relatable, immediately identifiable and remarkably familiar. But it’s not just a novel, it’s an insight into a system that we so often read about from the other side. It allows us to think about doctors as humans and to look at the intricacies of psychiatry and therapy in a way we are not usually accustomed to doing.

I thought about C the whole time I read this book, because in a way it felt like it came at the right time - to show me that C is a real person and he deserves to retire without me being angry and taking it personally.  I bloody hope I can remember that when I see him next.

Have you read this book? Did you enjoy it?

Eating

It is the Jewish New Year which is nothing like the ‘traditional’ new year. We don’t have big parties and celebrate with fireworks and loud noises and huge novelty glasses - we do that with the rest of the world on 31 December. But on the Jewish New Year we get together with our families; the religious amongst us go to synagogue and read from a special prayer book called a machzor, we pray for forgiveness for our sins, the ones we have committed to our fellow man and the ones we have committed against God. It is time of serious reflection and sanctity with a hundred other customs that millions of Jewish people all over the world follow.

Ours is not a very religious family but we observe some of the customs, especially the ones around food. We eat a round challah (a type of bread) to symbolise infinity and the constant cycles of the seasons, we eat apples dipped in honey for a round sweet year, we eat fish to symbolise fertility and good fortune and we eat pomegranate because the 613 seeds of the pomegranate correspond to the 613 commandments of the Torah. We also eat a ton of other things but of course, me being me I tend to focus on the sweet and delicious. I did not photograph anything other than this brilliant honey and cashew (circular of course) baclava that my nephew made.

As I said before we are not religious and I do not believe in God, but last night we did pray for peace - for everybody.

I know it sounds trite and a bit ridiculous - but honestly, I wish for everyone reading this post, their families, their friends, their neighbours and everybody else in the world - peace, sweetness, understanding and comfort.

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Please don’t forget to like this post (if you did), it helps to surface it for people on Substack who are not yet subscribers - possibly because they have no interest in hearing about my therapy - but really who knows?