Shrinks

Years ago, when Fio told a psychiatrist she was working full-time, attending college part-time, and screaming in the back yard on Sundays, he said she was just feeling sorry for herself. Chastened and angry, Fio went home, screamed in the back yard again, wrote the experience up as a short story, and gave him a copy on her next (and final) session.

Then there was the psychologist whom Fio told about when she saw her baby brother for the first time. She remembered there being a crowd of neighborhood women in the house awaiting Mother's arrival, and when the ambulance attendants brought her and baby inside on a stretcher, to everyone's delight, Fio exclaimed, "He's wide asleep!" But the psychologist disputed Fio's story, calling it a false memory because no hospital would deliver to the door, so Fio, who knew her experience was real, researched the time period--1945--and learned that due to the war effort, the hospitals didn't have enough beds and regularly discharged patients early, sending them home by ambulance because there was also a shortage of cars and gasoline.

The same psychologist also pooh-poohed Fiorella's memory of taking some tests in the school office when she was in first grade and overhearing people talk about her scores. But years later, she learned that the school had wanted to move her up to a combined second/third grade class, which Mother, who herself had been skipped a grade, nixed.

Enter the hero, a wonderful woman, a fellow romance writer who is also a psychologist and has been kind enough to give Fio good counsel when she has was in her depths.  Thank you, Janece Hudson, for listening. And thank you for believing me.