Rescripting a Painful Memory
Sharing Stories
January 13, 2024 at 2:55 p.m.
Free photo of woman crying
...by Iris Wehrle
This was for an assignment in graduate school: My mom was very ill with stomach cancer when I was in high school. She died when I was 16. We had her hospital bed in our large dining room, and whenever I came home from school basketball games, I checked on her prior to going to my bedroom upstairs. She needed my help to get off the bed and go to the bathroom.
I can only tell this story now without crying because I rewrote this memory.
In my rescripting, I let her cry and I cried with her, and I told her how much I loved her and how much I would miss her.
Iris Wehrle is retired from WA State where she was a vocational rehabilitation counselor for 18 years. Her mother, Martha Louisa Thorpe Price, was a homemaker and died at age 58.
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