I was in therapy for a few years dealing with complicated grief. Memory is a double edge sword. During this time I was unearthing some painful difficult memories that would not allow me to surpass them anymore. One was unburdening a secret I carried for 30 years. At first you feel relief of the burden, but then comes the very complicated issues of “what do you do with this feeling/information?” “how do you process that and move on?” I was able to work through a vault of pain that I had locked away, protected it with anger.

I have very good facial memory when I meet someone one. That has served me well over the years.

There is a good book that I have read over and over during my years in therapy (2013) titled, “Proust was a Neuroscientist” by Jonah Lehrer. The premise of the book is looking at writers and artists of the 19th and early 20th who understood the working of the brain before science proved the theory correctly. In the chapter pertaining to Proust shows how elastic memory is. Each time you remember an incident the memory changes because of you and the environment you are in when you remember.