Before confronting her mother with her emotions, Melissa works with Gary to prepare. Melissa says her mother's focus after the divorce was not her children.
Gary asks Melissa what she would say to her mother if she were still a child. "I'd probably say, 'You should love us. You should love me. We are still here, and we could love you back,'" she says. "I mean, life didn't have to be over. I think in a lot of ways, her life was over when my dad left."
As we go through life, Gary says we often re-experience similar feelings from our pasts. "We keep hitting the nerve again and again. ... Melissa did not even want to really recognize that this voice, negative in her, is still so vibrant. We want to believe we get over it, but fighting it just keeps it bubbling up at the wrong times."
