I used to go to therapy once a week in a building full of therapists. I’d sardine into a tight elevator with other people going to see their therapists and we’d pardon ourselves quietly as we squeezed past each other into long hallways of locked doors. After my therapist opened her door with her half-smile—I was usually late—I sat down on a futon couch apologizing. She wore expensive dark jeans and high boots and exquisite button-down shirts and had so much dark wavy hair flowing down over her shoulders. I was sure that she had more information than me. My plan was to describe a certain decision I’d been struggling with for years, and then sneakily find out what she would do, without having to work through any childhood trauma or anything, and also without her realizing how much more she knew than I did. Easier said than done. Mostly she asked me questions and I’d just freeze. At the end of our second or third session, she asked, “Why don’t you trust yourself?” During my long, awkward silence, she reached down beside her for a 5-Hour Energy drink and without interrupting the compassionate patience and interest she always projected, she opened it and knocked it back and returned the empty bottle to the floor beside her. It took me years, long after I stopped going to that building, to answer that question for myself.

I sat down today to write: how do we learn to trust ourselves as writers?

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