When love is a sham

by Lisa Harris1 Comment
Agatha Christie gives this line to Margot Bence, who was adopted at five and sent away at nine when her adoptive mother fell pregnant with her own child. The fury in it sounds like it should be about loss and a child who was loved and then abandoned. But when you read it again, the fury is pointed somewhere else. She's angry about the years she spent being certain she was wanted, and what that certainty cost her once it turned out to be wrong. And then at some point you realised your investment in the relationship was bigger than theirs. We all know some version of this. You trusted someone. A parent or friend, someone you'd have said was safe. And then at some point you realised your investment in the relationship was bigger than theirs. You were organising your emotional life around someone who was keeping you in a drawer. And the feeling that stays longest, much longer than the...
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Where were you on 9/11?

by Lisa HarrisNo Comments
At times in our lives time stands still. It literally stops. Shock and trauma do that. We can then sit speechless unable to connect to a thought, any thought. Sometimes those moments are unique to us and are a personal experience - sometimes thousands of us share those moments. I've had those personal moments in my life. I also shared hours of moments with milions of others on 9/11. I wasn't there, I was at home, watching it unfold on TV. I watched open mouthed as the news unfolded and I watched live as the second plane hit, as the towers fell, as news of further hijackings and the Pentagon crash came in. I still remember the feelings I experienced that day, and why. I feel them now as I write this, much much less intensely, but my body remembers what happened inside of me that day. I'm writing this today so many years later with much compassion, in remembrance of and with repect...
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