Hannah Wilson

About

Something I see often, usually around the third or fourth meeting: a person smiles at a memory, catches themselves, and immediately looks stricken, as though enjoying the recollection were a disloyalty to the one who died. It is not disloyalty. That flinch is one of the most common things in bereavement and one of the least talked about, because nobody warns you that pleasure will feel forbidden for a while. We work on giving the good memories back to you, which is slower than it sounds and matters more than almost anything else we do together. Alongside my practice I supervise newer clinicians, and this is the thing I most often have to point out to them: the smile is progress, not a lapse. I will not treat it as a lapse either. If you have been flinching at your own memories, come and talk to me.