Member-only story
The Healing Game
Jessica had spent the last four-and-a-half hours driving. The TED Talk she was listening to, about forgiveness, was given by a world-renowned neuroscientist. It played through her car’s surround sound. It gave the same message she’d always heard. Forgiveness is for you. It is not for the other person.
Whether a person chose to forgive or not was a combination of nature and nurture, and this was shocking to Jessica. Structural and metabolic characteristics of the brain affected a person’s tendency to forgive. This made Jessica feel better about her tendency to be unforgiving. However, holding grudges was bad for your health and there was no getting around that.
The GPS on the dashboard said that the Healing Center was fifteen minutes away. Because of the name, Jessica wondered if the place was exclusive. So, she’d Googled, and it wasn’t. The Healing Center didn’t even have a website.
Jessica took a sip from the iced latte in her Starbucks cup. Because she hadn’t slept the night before, her body was tired. However, her mind was wired. The car registered 115 degrees outside, but she felt a brief chill as the sweat on her body and clothes dried.
Picking up her ex-stepsister, Fatima, from a psychiatric facility had not been on her bingo card, but 2020 had been a crazy year. The two women hadn’t spoken in four years. Jessica didn’t even know…
