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For many years, I thought that my work with adults who have learning disabled past started in my capital city. Lately I realized that it was not so. What I used to term as "listening and encouraging a depressed individual" was actually sitting with and helping an adult who due to her negative experiences growing up has lost the will to deal with the complexities in life of having an abusive spouse and difficult  children.

What changed my mind was what the relatives of both ladies said. The lady in Silver City is a retired accountant. Then she was so depressed that for days she could not find the energy to brush her long curly hair. I used to sit with her in public having coffee. Then on the journey back, my daughter who saw her dropping me off asked why was Auntie so and so having her shirt on inside out. One day her sister-in-law thanked me for befriending her and helping to keep her sane. As this older lady saw it, I could choose to befriend others who are neatly dressed and properly groomed. Last week, Zelda's mother said the exact same thing to me. In this case, Zelda is out of her mental oppression. She is usually beautifully turned out. But according to her mother, I could have chosen to befriend another person who does not talk so arrogantly. I did not argue with the old lady about her daughter's arrogance. Only I saw it as a defense mechanism.

For the first time in the many years I have known her, Zelda confessed that she was a hyperactive kid and has had brain concussion twice. That is not surprising considering she would climb coconut palms and even the soft trunk papaya trees for fruits. Perhaps that accounts for her selective memory. Certain things that I could recall merely falls out of  the sieve in her memory center. It has puzzled me for a long time, for she is essentially an honest person: why she could conveniently forget certain events. Though she wants to confess the positive only, that day she admitted that an adult in her past would probably see her as mildly autistic as a child.