A reader asks: "When triggered, how do you rid yourself of that feeling?"

Four ideas. (TW for reference to sexual abuse.)

• I get myself out of the situation, physically.

• I breathe as deeply as I can and chant to myself: "Then was then, now is now."

• I try to identify the feelings - and I keep the list short:

  • shame

  • pain

  • anger

  • fear

  • guilt

  • loneliness

• Then I chant to myself, "I feel (insert feeling)" until the feeling releases. Or morphs. Often, what begins as anger ends as (insert feeling). As I continue breathing, I find joy.

  

  My main character, reclaiming herself.

I told my twelve-year-old to break the pool cue in half and use the jagged end to stab each of them through the chest.

She did.

My father was last. On her own, my twelve-year-old pulled the pool cue from his torso and shoved it through his eye socket to drive it into his skull.

Iso soothing, all that bloodletting. I could enjoy the good, clean smell of the emerging spring. This was a scent from last year. It was soft fresh dirt and new grass. It was April sun on my skin. Spring would spiral into summer, which would bring about fall. Then winter would come, to manifest as spring. Winter always became spring. Faith had less to do with the epic than it did with the miracle of time, passing.

—As Far as You Can Go Before You Have to Come Back.