Chapter One



A Broken Brain, a Lost Soul

The Triangle of Well-Being

Barbara's family might never have come for therapy if seven-year-old Leanne hadn't stopped talking in school. Leanne was Barbara's middle child, between Amy, who was fourteen, and Tommy, who was three. They had all taken it hard when their mother was in a near-fatal car accident. But it wasn't until Barbara returned home from the hospital and rehabilitation center that Leanne became "selectively mute." Now she refused to speak with anyone outside the family-including me.

In our first weekly therapy sessions, we spent our time in silence, playing some games, doing pantomimes with puppets, drawing, and just being together. Leanne wore her dark hair in a single jumbled ponytail, and her sad brown eyes would quickly dart away whenever I looked directly at her. Our sessions felt stuck, her sadness unchanging, the games we played repetitive. But then one day when we were playing catch, the ball rolled to the side of the couch and Leanne discovered my video player and screen. She said nothing, but the sudden alertness of her expression told me her mind had clicked on to something.

The following week Leanne brought in a videotape, walked over to the video machine, and put it into the slot. I turned on the player and her smile lit up the room as we watched her mother gently lift a younger Leanne up into the air, again and again, and then pull her into a huge, enfolding hug, the two of them shaking with laughter from head to toe. Leanne's father, Ben, had captured on film the dance of communication between parent and child that is the hallmark of love: We connect with each other through a give-and-take of signals that li...