For good and bad, my father’s love—if you can call it that—knew no bounds. Yes, his narcissism could get in the way, often got in the way, might have been the very engine driving his “love.” And yet . . . sometimes feeling loved comes down to simply seeing and being seen by another person. I think I saw who he was, in all his glory and monstrosity. Did he really see me in a way my mother couldn’t, or did he only adore in me a reflection of himself? If I have to come down on one side or the other, even now, I’d have to say I felt seen.
For at least a time, we saw each other.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Deborah A. Lott’s memoirs, essays, and reportage have been published in the Rumpus, Salon, the Alaska Quarterly Review, Bellingham Review, Black Warrior Review, Cimarron Review, the Los Angeles Times, StoryQuarterly, the Good Men Project, the nervous breakdown, and many other places. Her essays have been thrice named as “notables of the year” by Best American Essays. Her family’s legacy of hypochondria was featured on NPR’s This American Life.
Her first book, In Session: the Bond between Women and their Therapists, received wide acclaim for its unprecedented look at boundary and transference dilemmas from the perspective of clients. Lott surveyed and interviewed over three hundred women as well as numerous experts in the field as part of her research.
For twelve years, Lott served as senior consulting writer and editor to the UCLA/Duke University SAMHSA-funded National
Center for Child Traumatic Stress. In that capacity, she conferred closely with trauma experts to write training programs, reports, and web material for clinicians as well as the general public.
She teaches creative writing and literature at Antioch University, Los Angeles, where she serves as editor and faculty advisor to Two Hawks Quarterly online.
She lives with her husband, Gary Edelstone, in Los Angeles.
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