A Road Not Taken

The road not taken
forty years ago –

to trust my mother
hear her advice
to fire the therapist
who honed my resentment

If i did
i would have been
in touch with my brothers
close to my mom
forty years earlier

Instead
i listened to a
a therapist who justified the
venom i had against my mother

I envied my therapist’s children
wished i lived in her house
all the sentiments she should have
helped me channel toward my mother

I resented my mother for forty years
only to discover later on
how wise she had been
all along

And the therapist
died
of breast cancer
it was not related