Sublime

The body mystifies. The mind more so. Witnessing their complex intersections—and the unbidden ways in which the two can catastrophically fray—can unmoor us.

Mental illness pierces the veil, and those who suffer from it dwell with their fragility in plain view. My role as a psychiatrist is not to try to repair the veil but to strengthen my patients so that they can live, so that they can suffer less, so that they can hope.

I love that she still has these moments when closeness

It is hard to be empathetic and helpful to a patient if you see her as a threat to your credibility.

She is, it turns out, thinking about the body. How we inhabit the architecture of the bodies we are given. How our bodies can be powerful and how they can be encumbrances. How they can feel inextricably linked to our identities yet how they can also misrepresent and betray us.

If I am to abide with these patients, then I must accompany them to that place among the rocks, to the sweating wall. I must face with them the uncertainty of what lies beyond. I must stand at the edge with them and peer over into the fathomless depths. If I tell my patients, as I do, that this life can be a tolerable one, that they can face their

I believe that healing is a kind of holiness. But like any good religion, it leaves me with a fair number of huge and unanswerable questions.

How well can you tolerate my suffering? How well can you sit with the pain?