As I’ve grown older, I’ve been fortunate enough to meet women of all ages who experienced traumatic abandonment during childhood. They have come from Nepal and Sicily, Vietnam and China, Mississippi and Arkansas, New York and Maine. Our emotions are the same.

We are all so similar: fiercely independent, exceptionally responsible, sophisticated about money matters, always well-organized, and obsessively private. We seek order out of chaos. A strong sense of self-mastery is longed for, above all else…all in a determined and deeply heartfelt effort to feel safe.

“… wisdom comes to us when it can no longer do any good.”
— Gabriel García Márquez (Love in the Time of Cholera)