Has my entire life been a REACTION? So much of @chelseahandler ‘s story could have been my own. My brother didn’t die, but he was injured in a car accident when he was 17 (I was 14). The prognosis was that he’d never walk, talk, or recognize family again. In my home, it was my brother and me against the world. When he got hurt, I felt profoundly alone, and to this day I struggle to not have that loneliness creep in, even when I’m with people I love. Part of my fear is that anyone can disappear at any time. This fear is not conscious. Rather, it’s a vague, tangled force — a distress that appears as an underlying sense of doom that’s an expression of my childhood reaction and it appears almost without warning. It has been 28 years since my brother’s accident. I’m still unpacking its impact and survival mechanisms I developed as a traumatized 14-year-old trying to feel safe in a world that suddenly made no sense to me. A world where I saw all the people close to me reduced to mere shells of themselves. A world where I no longer had the person I was closest to. Chelsea said she felt like her brother abandoned her. I spent many years trying not to feel, or feeling just a little bit — in small ways and only if I could control it. To open myself up to emotions was to risk opening the floodgates of unprocessed grief, so I did my best to shut them down. With a limited range of emotions, using humor as deflection, working to stay busy, and/or engaging in constant activity as a means of distraction, I see now that the strategies I thought were keeping me safe were really reactions that limited my connection to myself and others. While time doesn’t heal, it does give us chances to understand the impact of trauma. And with practice, we can become aware of the feelings, thoughts, and emotions that the reactions bring about. 28 years later, my brother is a still impacted from his accident, but walks, talks, has a wife, goes skiing, works out, and is one of the most positive, optimistic, and funny people I know. He’s also one of my best spiritual teachers. I hope to share more of his wisdom and personality with all of you.