Emma Phillips

About

A moment I have seen many times: someone arrives and reports, with some bewilderment, that they had a difficult week and handled it. Not that nothing happened, but that something did happen and the following days proceeded more or less normally. They usually cannot account for the difference. I can. That is what it looks like when the interruption stops taking the whole week with it. Flashbacks tend to lose their reach before they lose their intensity. The first improvement is usually in how much of your life gets consumed afterwards rather than in how bad the moment itself feels, and knowing that helps, because otherwise people conclude nothing has changed. I think of this as a craft I am refining, and this is the piece of information I most often wish someone had given me earlier. Reach shrinks before intensity does. If a bad week no longer costs a fortnight, that is progress.