I think we are all more attached to pain and trauma than we should be. We have to actively seek out the good news in the world because so much trauma is thrown at us every day. This is the scenario: one day I push you out of the road and save you from getting hit by a car; the next day I drop something on your foot and break it. The broken foot is what stays with you, the imprint of pain. Years later you will still vividly remember me breaking your foot. We hold onto trauma like it’s our favorite stuffed animal. Trauma is our security blanket, our little Binky.

Last week after I had my drain removed, Amelia and I had lunch with her parents. We were sitting outside at a sidewalk cafe and ten feet away from us, a pickup truck hit a bicyclist. A terrible noise, a body thrown up onto a hood and tossed to the ground, a bicycle run over. It was traumatizing, for me, for the cyclist, for the driver, for everyone else witnessing it. Remember when I said I am the person who runs towards the fire? Yeah, I ran towards the moving truck. The woman with 30+ stitches in her chest is running out into the street. Amazing what adrenaline can do. The stitches, pain, and cancer trauma were all left in my chair; and the rest of me was out in the street with the cyclist. He miraculously was fine but very, very shaken up as was the driver of the truck. The cyclist was wearing a helmet, thank Dog. Amelia and I went into “take charge mode” like we often do, she with the cyclist, me with the driver. When it was over the police officer who came to the scene told us his aunt had breast cancer, then our server, who had also witnessed the accident, told us her Dad had just been diagnosed with brain cancer. The cafe was her Dad’s place. Here we all were, bound by trauma.