As far as looking at each other's lives and hardships, I have come to take on what for me is a comforting outlook on it. When Joe was in the rehabilitation hospital after his accident, there were a number of other children there with various histories and outcomes. We mothers would always sit in awe of each other, that we could handle our own situation but couldn't see how we'd have been able to deal with theirs.

I don't think I could have made it at all in what I see in other peoples lives, even ordinary, non-traumatic ones. I have a different set of skills and ways of coping that don't work very well outside of my own experience. People admire Alice for her "strength" in getting through all her hardships. She doesn't feel anything special. You just do what you do. It's pretty straight- forward most of the time.

My last husband used to say, "If life were easy, somebody else would get to live it!" I don't think events or bad people in themselves mean we've had it any harder. I think nightmares come at all times, in all forms, real and unreal, to all of us, playing no favorites. Sometimes we're better at fending them off than others. Sometimes we just look through them, other times we become totally incapacitated and permanently changed by them. I have more anxiety over what to wear to a meeting than how I'm going to present my ideas to them. Go figure, as shy as I am!