“Tell me why you’re here,” said Taz, the short-spiky-haired, khaki-shirted psychologist. It was the first question she asked on Gab’s first visit. Gab’s fear of turning out like her mother and her disinclination for letting people down had trumped her overwhelming inertia when it came to getting out of the house and down to her appointment.

She and Taz sat outside in a small garden with a sandpit and a reflective labyrinth and bees buzzing around lavender bushes that reminded Gab bittersweetly of Tony’s place. Gab had laid River down on a mat on the grass and he was happily banging and whacking the toys she had brought him, shuffling this way and that, tugging at the grass and tasting it. He was a welcome focus-point for Gab. It was much easier to talk to Taz while looking down at River—using him as a decoy, handing him toys, averting too much ingestion of grass—instead of looking Taz in the face.

Gab didn’t know how to answer Taz’s question at first. But she eventually said, “Because I don’t want to turn out like my mother.” And that was just the sort of answer Taz could work with, because then she could ask, “Why’s that?” and add, “Tell me about your mother?”

“Ha, she’s crazy,” answered Gab.

“And what does that mean?” smiled Taz, hoping Gab would uncover some of the hidden fears and labels she unconsciously held over herself and her mother at the same time.

That first session was not easy and Gab was exhausted for a week afterwards—on top of the standard exhaustion that comes with keeping a six month old occupied and alive. Just as she was picking herself up after the first appointment, the next session came around, and then the next; Taz had suggested they meet weekly at first.

During their fourth session, Gab told Taz about Robbie. Taz hadn’t asked about River’s father; she gave Gab space to share in her own words and way. Gab told Taz all about the party and about the conversation with her mother that had precipitated her desire to forget everything, to let it all go. She told Taz about finding her jeans scrunched up near her head after she’d woken with Robbie’s arm draped over her—of seeing him in his boxer shorts, and of the haunting gap—not knowing what had really happened.

Gab cried when she told Taz what it was like to find out she was pregnant, of sitting in the university toilet block alone and weeing on those sticks, twice. She thought she hadn’t wanted Robbie to know, she said. It had seemed too complicated. But what if she was turning out like her mother, who had barred any interaction with her own father? What did her son need? And what if Robbie didn’t want him? Or, what if Robbie wanted him too much? River was all hers now. Did she want to share him with someone she didn’t even know?

Steph’s betrayal and Tory’s phone call were weighing heavily, pinning her down in a spiral of tumult. As she recounted Tory’s phone call to Taz, she felt she was talking about someone else, not herself. The person who had done the things that Tory accused her of—who had fallen pregnant in the way she had—wasn’t her and she couldn’t accept it. She did not go to parties and get drunk and sleep with strangers who already had girlfriends. That was not her. And if it was, just who the hell was she anyway? And then Taz asked, Who was judging her? What was wrong with being a person like that? But Gab didn’t want to be a person ‘like that’ because that was the kind of person who hurt other people, who did stupid things, who ruined other people’s lives. And Taz said it was okay to make mistakes, and that the very fact that Gab didn’t want to hurt other people meant by default that she was not the person she was afraid she was.

“And maybe,” added Taz during that fourth session, “the girl who went to the party and got drunk and slept with Robbie was carrying more than she realised; maybe she was the girl who had endured years of emotional abuse and neglect at the hands of her mother—the sort of abuse that was so difficult to see, so impossible to quantify or even verify—and who had finally become fed up with carrying someone else’s pain.”

Gab didn’t want to realise that she was that girl. Because what did that mean? It meant she was vulnerable and soft; she had been hurt, deeply, crucially, perhaps irreparably. It wasn’t fair. She wasn’t that strong, invincible character who could deal with anything, and maybe everyone else had seen that except her. How heinously embarrassing. To recognise this meant pain, recognition of inadequacy and blind spots. If that pain got out, it would engulf her. She would drown; it was too much. She had caught fleeting glimpses of yearning, starving pain before, she told Taz—when she had watched Mr. C. with his kids; when she had spent time with Saanvi and Anders, seeing how they interacted with, respected and supported their girls, even at times with Tony. She had seen, in poignant, bloody brilliance, what she had completely missed out on. Home. Being invited into the families of others had given her the most painful and precious experiences of her life. And this had also given her a picture of the kind of mother she wanted to be for River, she told Taz.

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And Taz said it was okay to be that vulnerable girl who had been hurt, and that the feelings would come and engulf her, but they would also do what feelings always do—subside and change as she allowed herself to feel them, to recognise them, to accept them as part of her story. She didn’t have to be afraid of them.

And when Gab began to recognise this, the purposefulness that had pulsed through her as she thought of giving River all she had missed became more real, more enduring. She had always been aspirational, but the aspiration was becoming concrete self-belief. The loss of those guarded, defensive illusions of invincibility, in the past so seemingly necessary for survival, was the beginnings of hope and self-knowledge. This loss was more powerful than rage; or perhaps, it was the next incarnation of that rage. Gab had told Taz a bit about her fury, though she hadn’t told Taz that it was River who often evoked it. But Taz was not in the least shocked or surprised by Gab’s anger, and that helped. Taz knew how gruelling parenting could be.

At the end of her fourth session, Gab felt like she had scaled a mountain. She felt exhausted and out-of-breath, but somehow exhilarated, as if having gained a breath-taking new view. When the session concluded, Gab bundled River up, extracted the remaining grass from his hands (to his displeasure), collected his toys, blanket and baby-wipes, and juggled them all. Then, she wished she had a third arm as she tried to pay Taz for the session.

Taz helped Gab pack the pram. Then she looked at her.

“Gab,” she said, “You are doing great.”

Gab shrugged it off, but as she thought about it on the walk home, she realised that the voices in her life now—the ones she listened to most—were the ones who believed in her. She’d lived in the past with a voice that always dragged her down, and it had taken up residence in her own mind, filtering her interpretations of herself and her world. In trying to protect herself from it while living with it, she had inadvertently cut herself off from many good voices as well. She’d had to prop herself up alone—until now. Now she was really hearing those good voices, and she wanted to trust them. Dare she?

Gab pushed the pram along the footpath, now in the shade, now in the sun, now in the dappled light of their interplay. Could she do this? Could she make a real life for herself and her son? She didn’t know. But she couldn’t know unless she tried.

River gurgled with delight as Gab pointed out a dove dancing in a bird-bath. She suddenly felt thirsty to grow and learn; to push herself again. And that reminded her—she had just borrowed a new book on farmed micro-algae, a promising a source of sustainable non-animal protein for human consumption. Yes. She couldn’t wait to get home and start reading it.

***

And this may not seem a very victorious, triumphant or auspicious place to leave Gab and River—after four of six sessions with a local psychologist somewhere in Melbourne, thinking about micro-algae farms in the mid-year uni break, halfway through a Bachelor of Agriculture and six months into parenting—but actually, it is. Because, as Taz pointed out to Gab, the ability to reach out and ask for help, the fact that Gab had stepped out with courage to make change, the fact that she had divulged some of her deepest fears in order to move beyond them, and the fact that she had made decisions that made sense and benefitted her—even though they went against her ingrained habits—were the sorts of wins that were the substance of a hopeful future. They were signs of mature fragility and burgeoning courage.

Gab had made up her mind and was making the best life possible for herself and her son. At the point where life looked as though it was disintegrating, where Gab had loosened her grip on herself and started to come apart at the seams—this was crucial to forward movement. One foot in front of the other, one minute after the next—that was what it would take. The challenges were great and the stakes were high; but Gab’s courage and aspiration rose in step to meet them, within a constellation of support and encouragement that didn’t fix anything, but made life meaningful.

This was Gab.

She was tenacity.