Marrow by Elizabeth Lesser

helping hand extended, and one of my sisters will shake her head and say, “No, no! That’s not what happened,” or, “I never said such a thing,” or “You would think that.”
    Over the years, I have built cases in my heart around one sisterly slight, one overheard remark, attracting to them little grudges and bigger wounds, like a magnet gathering metal shavings and rusty nails. If I let the grudge build, it can affect a relationship for years. Sometimes I find the courage to bare my heart to a sister, and sometimes she will meet me halfway. When that happens, two things never cease to amaze me: one, how different our realities can be; and two, how the shavings and rusty nails will drop away if we just tell each other our stories—if we reveal our hurts, explain our behaviors, respect each other’s point of view, apologize or accept an apology. If we let the shavings and nails go, we come home to each other’s truths, and to the bigger truth: that we love each other. Then we can start over.

HIDING SOMEWHERE NEAR US
    ALTHOUGH SHE AGREES TO VISIT the therapist, Maggie warns me not to get too excited. “It’s too late for me to change who I am, Liz,” she says.
    â€œWhy would you have to change who you are?” I ask her.
    â€œIsn’t that the point of therapy?”
    â€œActually, it’s the opposite,” I say. “You don’t try to change yourself. You try to know yourself, and then to be yourself—your real self.”
    â€œWhat does that even mean, ‘your real self’?” Maggie asks. “I feel pretty real these days.”
    â€œWords are going to fail me here,” I say, preapologizing for the inadequate words at my disposal. “These are hard things to talk about without sounding like a moron.”
    â€œTry me,” Maggie says.
    â€œWhat I mean is we’re all born exactly who we are supposed to be, but we take these weird detours in order to fit in, or please others, or get our way, or just get by. We suffer wounds and build up scar tissue. You know how Shakespeare said, ‘To thine own self be true’? Well, for most of us, the voice of ‘thine own self’ gets harder and harder to hear because other voices take over. Therapy is separating out the voices in your head, and deciding which ones to listen to and which ones steer you away from your real self, your real purpose, what you love, what you value. There’s powerin naming the voices in your head: This one’s my father’s voice, that one belongs to a sister, that other one to a teacher, a husband, a wife, the culture, the country. Ah, and this one, this one rising to the surface, this one is mine. My own self. Can I trust that voice? Can I be true to it? That’s therapy.”
    â€œThat doesn’t sound moronic,” Maggie says. “But do people really ever figure all that out?”
    â€œWell, it takes some time,” I say.
    â€œBut we’ve only got a couple of hours.”
    â€œYeah, and we have the ticking time bomb of the transplant. It will motivate us because we’re doing it for each other,” I say. “We have a compelling reason to get down to the marrow of ourselves.”
    â€œThis above all, to thine own self be true.” My English teacher mother was quick to point out that Shakespeare put those famous words into the mouth of Polonius, the least true-to-thine-self of all the characters in Hamlet . It was the Bard’s ironic way of saying that, while the key to life is authenticity, most of us pay lip service to the idea, never really biting into the gold kernel of truth at the core of the self. Never really having the support, the know-how, the guts to mine the gold and live the gold and give the gold. That’s the tragedy at the heart of Hamlet . And it’s a tragedy in all of our lives until we summon the courage to dig deep, to say our truth, to be our truth.
    There is a